Introduction: Asian Americans and Educational History

Abstract

Asian American" is a relatively recent term that was first used by non-Asians and then adopted by Asian Americans themselves during the late 1960s in the heyday of ethnic and political activism that emerged on the heels of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Further energized by the anti-Vietnam War protests, activists in communities and on college campuses rejected the category of "Orientar' and instead self-identified as Asian American. 1 Encompassing highly diverse ethnic peoples descended from immi grant forbears from vast and varied regions of the world, this social con struct is ambiguous at best. Yet notwithstanding its dubious nature, the Asian American grouping has persisted, both to the detriment and benefit of the people so classified. On the one hand it has homogenized and essentialized the diversity within; on the other it has facilitated coalition build ing for political and economic (e.g., federal funding) benefits. Because the rate of immigration from Asia has multiplied in recent decades, Asian Americans have become one of the fastest-growing groups in the country. As a result, they have been increasingly visible in the pop ular mind. But despite their previous invisibility, Asian Americans have had a long history in the United States. As early as the 1500s some Chinese, and in the 1700s some Filipinos and Asian Indians, had arrived in North America. 2 Asian American history can be divided roughly into four periods: from 1850 to 1940, a time of immigration restrictions and discrimination; the World War II period that was dominated by the incarceration of Japanese

Racism and Racial Equity in Higher Education

“…People of color were still treated as inferior, forced to use different facilities than their White counterparts, and were denied access to social institutions, including K–12 schools and institutions of higher education (Feagin, ). In addition, xenophobia led to policies that prevented Asian immigrants from entering the United States, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Gentleman's Agreement Act of 1907 with Japan (Chan, ; Takaki, ; Tamura, , ; Museus, ).…”

Chapter 4 Contesting the Model Minority and Perpetual Foreigner Stereotypes: A Critical Review of Literature on Asian Americans in Education

“…Of equal import is another finding that "only 15.1 percent of the essays and essay reviews (given all the publications within the ten year period) and an even smaller 9.5 percent of the book reviews focused on issues of race and ethnicity, most of which were on African Americans, followed by European Americans, and then Native Americans" (p. 65). Important contributions to the field include Tamura's (2003) edited special issue of the History of Education Quarterly, Pak (2002), Asato (2005), Okihiro (1999), and Austin (2004). Aside from specific texts devoted to Asian American educational experiences, most notably the edited book by Nakanishi and Nishida (1995) and Weinberg (1997), which include brief histories of some of the major Asian ethnic groups, the field of educational history needs to develop more inclusive scholarship that reflects the changing nature of students' lives in the latter half of the 20th century.…”

Disorienting race and education: changing paradigms on the schooling of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

“…However, in comparison to other communities of color in the USA, the state of research on AAPI educational history is at a more nascent stage (Tamura, 1994;Tamura, 2003;Tamura et al, 2002). Knowing about the history of AAPI education can provide a 'long view' of their struggles and accomplishments in the US school system.…”