All content tagged with: Asian-American

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  • Exposing Another Ignored Rift Within the System: Anti-Asian Hate

    By: Meghan PateroAssociate Editor, Vol. 26 On March 11, 2021, President Biden recognized the struggles the entire nation has grappled with because of COVID-19 by delivering his first prime time address of his presidency.[1] Appropriately, much focus was dedicated to the new COVID-19 relief package as one of the…

  • Letter from the Editors in Response to Increased Violence Against Asian Americans

    art by Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya (@alonglastname) provided for use in protest The China virus. Model minorities. The “Kung Flu.” When the COVID-19 pandemic began, so did the onslaught of racist messaging fueled by then-President Donald Trump. Many Americans were appalled at the apparent blaming of a pandemic on a…

  • Reaction against the Denial of Comfort Women’s Voices and Truth

    By Karly JungAssociate Editor, Vol. 26 Across the globe, academics and activists mobilized to thoroughly examine a Harvard professor’s characterization of “comfort women” as prostitutes.[1] So-called “comfort women” consisted of women and girls from various countries (though primarily from Korea, a colony of Japan at the time) who…

  • RESPONSE: The bamboo ceiling cannot be separated from wider inequality

    By Jennifer Chun Associate Editor, Vol. 21 In the October 3rd issue of The Economist, an article entitled “The model minority is losing patience” speaks of the rising “trend” of Asian Americans more vigorously fighting discrimination, especially in academia. After introducing some of the pending lawsuits filed by…

  • Wartime Prejudice Against Persons of Italian Descent: Does the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 Violate Equal Protection?

    Most people know that the United States interned persons of Japanese descent during World War II. Few people know, however, that the government interned persons of German and Italian descent as well. In fact, the internment was part of a larger national security program, in which the government classified non-citizens of all three ethnicities as "enemy aliens" and subjected then to numerous restrictions, including arrest, internment, expulsion from certain areas, curfews, identification cards, loss of employment, and restrictions on travel and property. Four decades after the war, Congress decided to compensate persons of Japanese descent who had been "deprived of liberty or property" by these restrictions. Congress has not, however, redressed the harm done to persons of German or Italian descent. This Note explores why Congress decided to distinguish between victims of Japanese and Italian descent, why the D.C. Circuit held that the distinction does not violate equal protection, and the potential impact of new historical evidence on both conclusions.

  • Affirmative Action & Negative Action: How Jian Li’s Case Can Benefit Asian Americans

    In October 2006, Asian American student Jian D filed a civil rights complaint against Princeton University claiming that Princeton's affirmative action policies were discriminatory. Li argues that affirmative action gives preferences to non-Asian minorities at the expense of Asian students. Li's case aligns the interests of Asian Americans with Whites who challenge affirmative action and suggests that such policies are inherently discriminatory because they exclude students based on race and sacrifice merit. This Article argues that Li's exclusion is not due to affirmative action but is likely due to "negative action," the unfavorable treatment of Asian Americans relative to Whites. Affirmative action is not discriminatory because it considers a multitude of factors, including race, to achieve a diverse student population. Nor does affirmative action sacrifice merit; rather, it redefines merit in a way that can benefit students of all racial groups. On the other hand, negative action is discriminatory and prevalent. Whether it takes the form of legacies, admission limits or racial group comparisons, negative action discriminates against Asian Americans based on their race and contributes to existing inequalities in admissions. Framing Li's case as a claim against negative action instead of affirmative action is a more accurate analysis that attacks ongoing discrimination in admissions, but preserves affirmative action's benefit for all racial groups.

  • Education and Labor Relations: Asian Americans and Blacks as Pawns in the Furtherance of White Hegemony

    Asian Americans and Blacks have been, and continue to be, racialized relative to each other in our society. Asian Americans and Blacks have come to occupy marginalized positions as the polarized ends on the economic spectrums of education and labor relations, with an expanding "Whiteness" as the filler in the middle as Whites manipulate the differing interests of both subordinated groups to align with White (the dominant group's) interests. Although Whites purport to champion the interests of one subordinate group over the other, in reality the racialization of Asian Americans and Blacks in our country is rooted in the preservation of White hegemony; this racialization is harmful to both subordinate groups and serves to reinforce White hegemony by exploiting areas of White privilege and domination, particularly in the context of education and labor relations. However, many mainstream theories and historical attempts to characterize the racialization of Asian Americans and Blacks (the theory of a monolithic form of racism that just happens to result in differing effects on Asian Americans and Blacks, the theory of a Black- White binary, the racial triangulation of Asian Americans against Whites and Blacks, and the "model minority" myth) fail to fully describe and capture the different positions within a multidimensional social hierarchy that Asian Americans and Blacks occupy. Therefore, we must look beyond these theories in order to fully understand race relations and the position of Asian Americans and Blacks in our society.

  • Negative Action Versus Affirmative Action: Asian Pacific Americans are Still Caught in the Crossfire

    The author concludes that Espenshade and Chung's inattention to the distinction between negative action and affirmative action effectively marginalizes APAs and contributes to a skewed and divisive public discourse about affirmative action, one in which APAs are falsely portrayed as conspicuous adversaries of diversity in higher education. The author will also argue that there is ample reason to be concerned about the harmful effects of divisive and empirically unsupported claims about APAs influencing the public debate over affirmative action, particularly in Michigan, where an anti-affirmative action initiative nearly identical to California's Proposition 209 will appear on the November 2006 ballot. For example, in commenting to the press about Espenshade and Chung's study, Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity-a leading advocacy group working to dismantle affirmative Action- cast the issue in starkly (and falsely) divisive terms: "If eliminating race-based admissions results in more Asian students or fewer African American students being admitted to top schools, so be it"

  • The Profiling of Threat Versus the Threat of Profiling

    This speech covers three points. First, a brief summary of the failed federal criminal prosecution of Wen Ho Lee is given. Second, Wu talks about the racial profiling used in this case. Third, Wu talks about the possibilites for Asian Americans and other racial minorities to engage in principled activism to overcome these unfortunate trends.

  • To Yick Wo, Thanks for Nothing!: Citizenship for Filipino Veterans

    In this Note, the Author uses science fiction novelist Robert Heinlein's model of citizenship as an analytical framework for examining the historical treatment of Filipino veterans of World War II. The Author Heinlein's conception of citizenship in Starship Troopers was one in which a person can acquire citizenship only through a term of service in the state's armed forces. Similarly, the United States provided immediate eligibility for citizenship to World War II era foreign veterans, but it effectively excluded Filipino veterans from this benefit. The Author examines how the plenary power doctrine in immigration law, has quashed legal challenges by Filipino veterans and created a structural imbalance that not only allows but encourages similar inequities. The Author also notes that while Congress has enacted remedial legislation, this delayed conferral of citizenship without accompanying veteran's benefits is both inadequate and incomplete. Accordingly, the Author suggests that the plenary power doctrine, in the context of the Filipino veterans, must give way to textual reading of the U.S. Constitution which places an express limit of geographic uniformity in the area of naturalization. Drawing from the use of reparations in immigration policy, the Author recommends that further legislative remedies be enacted to ensure that Filipino veterans and their descendants are provided a fair and equitable remedy for their service to the United States.