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Why We Need a Critical Asian American Legal Studies Present-day attitudes about minorities often demonstrate a lack of understanding about the history and current status of Asian Americans. For example, during the spring of 1991, a national poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News “revealed that the majority of American voters believe that Asian Americans are not discriminated against in the United States” and that “[s]ome even believe that Asian Americans receive ‘too many special advantages.’”1 The United States Commission on Civil Rights called this a misconception in 1992 and compiled evidence confirming that Asian Americans face widespread prejudice, discrimination, and barriers to equal opportunity. A first step then is to counter the misperception that Asian Americans occupy a privileged position in U.S. society. Because a comprehensive overview of Asian American history is beyond the scope of this book, I will discuss two major issues here: nativistic violence and discrimination against Asian Americans, and the “model minority” myth.2 In chapter 5 I will return to these and other issues and events that have profoundly shaped Asian American history and our current status. While all disempowered groups have suffered from exclusion and marginalization , Asian Americans have been subjected to unique forms. Traditional civil rights advocates and critical race scholars have failed to account sufficiently for these differences. A critical Asian American legal studies is needed to change the current racial paradigm, which is inadequate to support a more complete discourse on race and the law. That Was Then, This Is Now: Variations on a Theme Part of the problem is that many people remain unaware of the violence and discrimination that have plagued Asian Americans since their arrival in this 3 48 country. Much of this ignorance can be attributed to school textbooks that fail to include Asian Americans in the history of this nation.3 Moreover, those who know the history often fail to make the connection between this history and the ongoing problems that continue to affect Asian Americans today. I attribute this lack of awareness in part to history textbooks that “routinely omit the word ‘because.’ . . . Students must guess whether facts strung together are causally related. Texts present a ‘crabgrass’ or ‘natural disaster’ theory of history; problems unaccountably grow until they become serious, at which time they keep on going until they stop.”4 If things are going to improve, we should remember what the philosopher George Santayana said, that “[p]rogress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness .”5 When I look at certain recent events, such as the rise in the incidence of hate crimes directed toward Asian Americans, or the rhetoric of the official English movement and of politicians such as Patrick Buchanan, or even the uproar caused by the sale of the Rockefeller Center and the Seattle Mariners to Japanese investors, I question how much progress we have made. When I look at those events, I see that we have not retained in our cultural memory the history of discrimination against Asian Americans, and we are left to replay variations on the tired theme of anti-Asian violence. Violence against Asian Americans Anti-Asian sentiment has historically expressed itself in violent attacks against Asian Americans. The 1982 killing of Vincent Chin in Detroit by two white autoworkers, described in greater detail in chapter 1, is one variation on this theme. Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was punished by two white men for being of Asian ancestry and for paying attention to a white woman. People like him were displacing “real” Americans like them from their jobs; people like him were displacing “real” Americans like them from their rightful place with their women. This threat to their white masculinity and to their sense of economic and sexual entitlement drove them to hunt Vincent for twenty to thirty minutes, to sneak up on him and grab him, and to beat him to death with a baseball bat. The physical violence was then compounded by the light sentences—a fine of $3,780, probation for three years, and no jail time—given to the two attackers who, according to the judge, had simply been administering a punishment that got out of hand.6 I relate this story not to point out a miscarriage of justice, but to begin developing the thesis that the killing of Vincent Chin is not an isolated Why We Need a Critical Asian American Legal Studies | 49 [3.15.3.154] Project MUSE (2024...

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