In Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White, author Frank Wu writes, “As a nation, we have become so seemingly triumphant at vilifying racists that we have induced denial about racism.”
Denial about racism might lead us to want to dismiss this view, but it’s not hard to find evidence to support Wu’s perspective.
In preparing for this issue on the experiences of Asian and Asian Americans in independent schools, I found a recent survey of highly educated Americans that revealed that about one-third believe that Chinese Americans have too much influence in the field of technology and that they are more loyal to China than to the U.S. Almost half believe that Chinese Americans pass secret information to China. One quarter think that Chinese Americans are taking too many jobs from other Americans. Most did not like the idea of a Chinese-American president or even a Chinese-American corporate CEO.
When American figure skater Tara Lipinsky beat out American figure skater Michelle Kwan for the gold medal in the 1998 Olympics, MSNBC printed a headline that read, “American beats out Kwan.”
A friend told me recently how, when his adopted Vietnamese-born son first started school, the principal said that his son didn’t need to be in an ESL class because he was Asian and, therefore, smart enough to learn on his own.
The vilification of the behavior of the worst of us as a means to cover up our own culpability with ingrained racism in this nation means that the ingrained racism will persist, will continue to wreak havoc on the lives of people of color, will continue to underwrite social inequity, and will continue to undermine the lofty goals of our striving democracy.
I particularly like how Wu thinks about his relationship to all this. “For me,” he writes, “the dilemma… is figuring out what to do. I would like to be proactive rather than reactive.”
In an independent school context, what does proactive look like? When it comes to the experiences of Asian and Asian Americans, perhaps the best place to start is by considering why the ironically belittling notion of Asian Americans as “the model minority” persists. How does a nation come to embrace such a concept? What is the problem with this? How does it undermine the actual experiences of individual students and the collective experiences of the Asian and Asian-American community in U.S. schools? And what does it say about those who believe the myth?
As the authors in this issue urge, we could also include a far more accurate and detailed history of Asian Americans in our U.S. history and social studies classes, ensure that we have a proportionate number of Asian Americans on the faculty, be clear about how we include Asian Americans in all diversity dialogue, and consider the needs of the growing number of transracially adopted Asian children. We can get a better handle on the complexity within the Asian-American community (over 50 nations and even more languages), work hard to counter the feeling that Asian Americans have of being “perpetual foreigners” in their own country, and reach out to Asian-American families so that they are not just welcome in the school community, but actively engaged in it.