We Could Shape It: Organizing for Asian Pacific American Student Empowerment (original) (raw)
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An Invisible Crisis. The Educational Needs of Asian Pacific American Youth
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An urgent educational crisis threatens the futures of a growing number of Asian Pacific American students, both immigrant and American-born. This crisis is largely invisible to most Americans, even to many in the teaching profession, because many see all Asian Pacific American students as members of a model minority destined to excel. This image is a destructive myth for the many Asian Pacific American children the schools are failing. The number of Asian Pacific American students is large and growing rapidly, and the context for educating these students effectively is changing. While immigrants who came to this country after 1965 were well-educated and well-off, more recent groups of Asian Pacific Americans are poor and poorly educated. The schools' task is complicated by historic problems of poverty and racial discrimination. Language and literacy issues are foremost in the problems of these students. In addition, most schools do not have curricula appropriate to educate multilingual and multicultural student populations. Support for families and youth development is inadequate. Community groups and foundations can offer much-needed support to school's efforts to help this underserved population. Recommendations for foundation help to Asian Pacific American students center on: (1) community/school/family partnerships; (2) institutional change and accountability; (3) curriculum development; (4) language development research and programs; and (5) teacher recruitment and training. Appendixes lists 19 resource organizations for program information and 13 other resource organizationS. (Contains 4 tables, 2 graphs, and 61 references.) (SLD)
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The objective of this commentary is to call attention to the importance of education policy that promotes Asian American (AA) communities. I argue AA communities have not received enough attention in the domain of education policy primarily due to the stereotypes embedded in the dominant “model minority myth” and “perpetual foreigner ideology.” Furthermore, I discuss how the exclusion and misrepresentation of AA communities lead to civic and political alienation of AA youths, in addition to physical and psychological violence toward these populations. I conclude by proposing research questions related to promoting AA actors in education policymaking.
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Sarai Koo recently earned a Ph.D. degree in the College of Educational Studies at Chapman University, Orange, California. Trisha S. Nishimura is an assistant professor in the Department of Education at Whittier College, Whittier, California. cans and Latina/os—are pigeon-holed with particular sterotypical characteristics that often do not accurately describe them in general or in particular. In addition, we believe strongly that as minority groups who experience racial oppression, albeit in different ways, Asian Americans and Latina/os could and should be strong partners in the fight for social justice and equity. Drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), we report on narratives of education collected from three young Asian women living in and attending a predominately Latina/o community and school. We explored how Asians and Latina/o groups intersect in a majority minority community. Specifically, we sought to understand:
Chang, B., & Martínez, R. A. (2009). In the majority: Challenges, resources, and strategies for educating immigrant students and students of color in LAUSD. UCLA CCCP., 2009
The communities surrounding Belmont and Lincoln High Schools (LAUSD) in inner-city Los Angeles have been the context of many struggles for social justice over the past several decades. These school communities have historically been under-served by the schooling system and plagued by dismal academic outcomes. Moreover, students and parents from these communities have seldom been invited to participate in efforts to improve these inequitable conditions. Supported by the UCLA Center for Community Partnerships, this report is the result of a collaborative project between the Southeast Asian Community Alliance (SEACA) and Principal Investigator, Professor Kris Gutiérrez (UCLA).
Genealogy
For centuries, Asians living in the U.S. have had to negotiate between the narratives that dominant society has imposed upon them and their understanding of what it means to be Asian and Asian American. When combined with the hierarchies of racial categories, the narratives underlying monoracialism are inherently limiting, obscuring their nuanced experiences, and stripping them of their ability to express the personal constructions of their identity The purpose of this qualitative case study was to elevate the voices of Asians and Asian Americans, their process of “inventing” their identity, and how their conceptualizations begin to deconstruct and challenge monoracialism. I argue that Asians and Asian Americans engage in a process where the interpretation and revision of meaning that emerges during interactions with others can illuminate the role of master narratives and how they negotiate between these structural factors and their ideas of what it means to be Asian or Asian Americ...
2019
First and foremost, I would like to thank my parents for my inspiration for this project. I was too young to realize for so many years, but I realize now that they were pioneers for not only myself, but Asian Americans everywhere. When my father came to the United States when he was only eleven years old, he was one of the first Korean immigrants Northern Virginia. Despite this, he wasn't the first to come to America; two other waves of major Korean immigration had come across the country years before. To keep in context, the Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1965, and my father arrived in the USA in 1976; tensions were still high, and the ethnic landscape had yet to include Asians or Hispanics into the black and white diaspora discussion. However, an even greater factor to consider was the Cold War, which prompted massive displacement and the US opening its doors. Further complicating the issue was the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, which was aimed at "abolishing the national-origins quota," rather creating a seven-category preference system that did little to alleviate tensions between the different socially defined ethnic groups and refugees in American society. From the moment he arrived, he had to face a whole new culture, environment, and challenges. He found protection and comradery amongst the few other Koreans who had lived in the area, but in general he was an enigma. Not black. Not white. He was neither, but rather, unique; Asian American. My mother, though she came later in the 80s, faced similar problems, as she and her roommate, another woman from Korea were young aspiring nurses living in Brooklyn, NYC, the melting pot of the United States, a plethora of cultures, but also a K i m | iv breeding ground for conflict and ethnic tensions. Throughout it all, they never broke, and their struggles helped them learn lessons that I was taught and will never forget. The most important was: never forget who you are. I never forgot to balance my identity as an Asian American. We have stories, struggles, and perspectives that need to be taught and be brought out to the world. If my parents had never asked me to learn about myself, I would've never taken this class, or tried to help the Asian American Studies program. I would've never tried