scholarly journals How Other Minorities Gained Access: The War on Poverty and Asian American and Latino Community Organizing

2020 ◽  
pp. 106591292098345
Author(s):  
Jae Yeon Kim
Keyword(s):  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
War On Poverty ◽  
Advocacy Organizations ◽  
Minority Community ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Community Organizers ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

In the early twentieth century, Asian Americans and Latinos organized along national origin lines and focused on assimilation; By the 1960s and 1970s, community organizers from both groups began to form panethnic community service organizations (CSOs) that emphasized solidarity. I argue that focusing on the rise of panethnic CSOs reveals an underappreciated mechanism that has mobilized Asian Americans and Latinos—the welfare state. The War on Poverty programs incentivized non-black minority community organizers to form panethnic CSOs to gain access to state resources and serve the economically disadvantaged in their communities. Drawing on extensive archival research, I identify this mechanism and test it with my original dataset of 818 Asian American and Latino advocacy organizations and CSOs. Leveraging the Reagan budget cut, I show that dismantling the War on Poverty programs reduced the founding rate of panethnic CSOs. I further estimated that a 1 percent increase in federal funding was associated with the increase of the two panethnic CSOs during the War on Poverty. The findings demonstrate how access to state resources forces activists among non-primary beneficiary groups to build new political identities that fit the dominant image of the policy beneficiaries.

scholarly journals How Other Minorities Gained Access: The War on Poverty and Asian American and Latino Community Organizing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jae Yeon Kim
Keyword(s):  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
War On Poverty ◽  
Advocacy Organizations ◽  
Minority Community ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Community Organizers ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

In the early 20th century, Asian Americans and Latinos organized along national origin lines and focused on assimilation; By the 1960s and 1970s, community organizers from both groups began to form panethnic community service organizations (CSOs) that emphasized solidarity. I argue that focusing on the rise of panethnic CSOs reveals an underappreciated mechanism that has mobilized Asian Americans and Latinos—the welfare state. The War on Poverty programs incentivized non-black minority community organizers to form panethnic CSOs to gain access to state resources and serve the economically disadvantaged in their communities. Drawing on extensive archival research, I identify this mechanism and test it with my original dataset of 818 Asian American and Latino advocacy organizations and CSOs. Leveraging the Reagan budget cut, I show that dismantling the War on Poverty programs reduced the founding rate of panethnic CSOs. I further estimated that a 1% increase in federal funding was associated with the increase of the two panethnic CSOs during the War on Poverty. The findings demonstrate how access to state resources forces activists among non-primary beneficiary groups to build new political identities that fit the dominant image of the policy beneficiaries.

Asian American Theater and Drama from the 1960s to the 1990s

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Kim Lee
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Solo Performance ◽  
Frank Chin ◽  
American Drama ◽  
American Theater ◽  
Theater Companies ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Art And Activism ◽  
The 1960S

Asian American theater was created in the 1960s and the 1970s as a national movement by actors, playwrights, designers, directors, and producers who wanted to promote the inclusion and representation of Asian Americans in American culture. At the beginning of the 1960s, the concept of “Asian American theatre” did not exist, and “Asian American drama” was not a known genre. Instead, there were “oriental” actors who wanted to play non-stereotypical roles and to fight the practice of yellowface, a makeup convention in which white actors alter their face to look Asian. The “oriental” actors had a two-pronged agenda of art and activism to be taken seriously for their talent and experience. The first Asian American theater company, the East West Players, was founded in 1965 by actors in Los Angeles to further the agenda. In the 1970s, other Asian American theater companies and groups emerged around the country, and original Asian American plays began to be produced. Playwrights such as Frank Chin, Wakako Yamauchi, and Philip Kan Gotanda had their first plays produced at Asian American theater companies founded in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s, Asian American plays began to be produced in mainstream theater, which includes Broadway, off-Broadway, and regional theaters. The success of David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, which received the 1988 Tony Award for Best Play, brought much attention to Asian American drama, and a number of plays were produced and published subsequently. Playwrights such as Velina Hasu Houston, Elizabeth Wong, and Jeannie Barroga had their plays produced at major theater companies, and Asian American theater companies continued to support new playwrights. In nontraditional theater venues, multimedia and avant-garde artists such as Jessica Hagedorn and Ping Chong were active in creating original performance pieces. Additionally, solo performance became a major performance genre for Asian American artists who wanted to use their body and voice to tell their own stories. Dan Kwong, Denise Uyehara, and Brenda Wong Aoki were forerunners in launching the genre of Asian American solo performance. A number of Asian American actors such as B. D. Wong, John Lone, and Mia Katigbak also received significant opportunities and recognition, but their two-pronged agenda of art and activism remained relevant and urgent. In the early 1990s, Asian American actors led the protest of the Broadway production of the mega-musical Miss Saigon that featured a white actor in yellowface makeup in the original London production. The protest galvanized Asian American theater artists around the country and inspired a new generation of writers, actors, designers, directors, and producers to create what would become one of the fastest growing sectors of American theater.

Asian International Students at U.S. Universities in the Post-2008 Collapse Era

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Wu
Keyword(s):  
International Students ◽  
Asian American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
First Century ◽  
Asian American Studies ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Asian International Students ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

Chapter 12 addresses the ways in which Asian American Studies’ overriding insistence on recovering a useable resistant past via the aforementioned rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s has made it troublingly reluctant to examine relevant accommodation. As the title suggests, Wu considers how the intellectual trajectory of the field, dominated by a limited U.S.-centrism, has proved largely ineffective with regard to the twenty-first century influx of international students from Asian countries at U.S. universities.

Assimilation and Loss of Ethnic Heritage among Third-Generation Japanese Americans

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takeyuki Tsuda
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
Japanese Culture ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
The Third ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Socioeconomic Success ◽  
American Society ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter focuses on the third-generation sansei, who have followed the assimilative trajectory of their prewar nisei parents. Raised in white, middle-class suburbs, they are well integrated into mainstream American society and have experienced a considerable degree of socioeconomic success. Compared to the other generations, they have generally lost their ancestral heritage and have the least interest in developing transnational ties with Japan. However, they experienced the ethnic activism of the Asian American movement in the 1960s and 1970s, the gradual turn toward multiculturalism, and the emergence of Japan as a respected global economic power. As a result, the sansei claim to have inherited aspects of the ancestral Japanese culture and express greater pride in their ethnic identities as Japanese Americans than the prewar nisei.

Sansei Women and the Gendering of Yellow Power in Southern California, 1960s–1970s

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie J. Matsumoto
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
Southern California ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Gender Expectations ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Asian American Movement ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Community Issues ◽  
The 1960S

In the 1960s and 1970s, third-generation Japanese American (Sansei) women in southern California began to challenge gendered racializations in both the ethnic community and the larger society. As activists in the Asian American movement, they criticized stereotypical images of Asian/Americans, using the arts to create new representations, as they drew inspiration from Asian women engaged in revolutionary struggle. They also organized women’s groups to address community issues such as childcare access, seniors’ health, drug abuse, and workers’ rights. Sansei women not only assessed their position in U.S. society but also debated their relationship to Japan. Their experiences show the persisting significance of gender in the racialization of Japanese Americans as well as the ways in which women’s critique of gender expectations helped to shape the Asian American movement.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela K. Ahlgren
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Asian America ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Race And Sexuality ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Asian American Identity ◽  
The 1960S

The introduction places North American taiko in the context of Asian American identity, the Asian American movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and the history of taiko in Japan. The chapter further defines the scope and aims of the study, explaining how the book seeks to highlight gender, race, and sexuality as key lenses through which taiko can be understood. The chapter defines and complicates what “Asian America” means and how it intersects productively with embodied performance, ultimately arguing that taiko players from a range of backgrounds perform Asian America through their involvement in the art form. The chapter provides a brief history of taiko in the United States and offers an overview of the remaining chapters of the book.

The Cold War and Asian American Literature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Kim
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Asian American Literature ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The Cold War

The Cold War (defined here by the popular, though much-questioned, time frame of 1947–1991) coincides initially with a post-World War II wave of literature by Asian Americans as well as reforms affecting immigration numbers and national origins. Post-1965, further immigration reform and refugee admission led to a different wave of authors, which coincides in its turn with geopolitical shifts, including the ongoing massive conflicts and regime changes in Asia, that would ultimately lead to rapprochement and the generally accepted end of the Cold War around the late 1980s. Furthermore, these years coincide with the birth of pan-Asian American consciousness and political movements in the late 1960s and 1970s. Thus, there is an unsurprising plethora of literature from this era, as well as an increasing volume of literary criticism on it, though neither usually treats the geopolitical or domestic US concerns most commonly identified with the Cold War. Asian American literature and authors importantly fit the logic of the early Cold War by illustrating, as proto-model minorities, the blessings of life in America as a contrast to an increasingly Communist-identified Asia after the “loss” of China to Communism in 1949. Their identification with Confucian or other traditional ideals also made them role models for the domestic social containment that constrained middle-class America to conformity in the 1950s (though, of course, there were less mainstream narratives that combated this trend). However, both of these narratives shifted in the 1970s. From exemplary immigrants, Asian American literary depictions turned toward much more ambivalent and traumatized refugees, chiefly from Southeast Asia. Likewise, a generation of authors rebelling against the model minority image protested racial inequities in both a domestic and international framework. Linking nation and globe via Third World solidarity, later Cold War works and post-Cold War reflections on the period heavily critiqued the US military presence in Asia and reflected on the enduring traumas and difficulties of racialization for Asian Americans inextricably identified as foreign or Other. Calling for civil rights out of a re-narrated history of exclusion, incarceration, and discrimination, rather than appealing to the vague pluralism of the early Cold War, Asian American literature illustrates this era’s conflict through exemplars of containment and a more explicitly revolutionary and diverse set of works.

scholarly journals From Inter-Racial Solidarity to Action: Minority Linked Fate and African American, Latina/o, and Asian American Political Participation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Kar Ming Chan ◽  
Francisco Jasso
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Linked Fate ◽  
Minority Community ◽  
Ethnicity And Politics

AbstractRecent literature in race, ethnicity, and politics has assessed how minority linked fate, defined as “the idea that ethnoracial minorities might share a sense of commonality that extends beyond their particular ethnoracial group to other ethnoracial groups (Gershon et al., in Politics Groups Identities 7(3):642–653, 2019),” shapes attitudes toward descriptive representation and support for coalition building. However, scholarship has yet to examine the influence of minority linked fate on political participation. We argue that similar to those who view the interests of co-ethnics as a proxy for their individual interests, Latina/os, Asian Americans, and African Americans who express linked fate with a more expansive minority community are more likely to take political action. This political participation results from senses of obligation to and solidarity with other racial minorities outside of their own. Results from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey show that controlling for conventional measures of linked fate, minority linked fate is associated primarily with more system-challenging modes of political activity for Latina/os, Asian Americans, and African Americans. We conclude by positioning minority linked fate as a complementary heuristic to traditional notions of intra-racial linked fate and note how shared inter-racial linked fate informs our understanding of recent political activism among people of color.

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