The School System Makes Me Think I Fell Out of a Coconut Tree

If you had told me at the beginning of the summer that the close family friend who took care of Martin Luther King Jr.’s children after King was assassinated was also the same person who came out at the first ever gay rights protest in American history, and that this person also gave us our first medical treatment and cultural competency guidelines for people living with HIV/AIDS, it would have taken a citation or two to take it as fact. However, I might not have believed you at all if you had told me his name was Kiyoshi Kuromiya, a Japanese-American who organized the largest anti-war protest in the University of Pennsylvania’s history. With the extent to which Asian Americans have been intentionally erased from American history—one need only think of the Chinese laborers pushed out of the photograph taken of the Transcontinental Railroad they had built—we must now be intentional about whether we allow that erasure to continue.

Throughout my life, I tried to hold myself responsible for learning about Asian American history on my own time. I figured I'd eventually catch up if I continued reading R.F. Kuang or Alexander Chee. I assumed that I couldn’t count on a school to teach me this history because it was limited, and that Asian American activists were exceptions to the rule and not constants in a long legacy of groundbreaking organizers. No matter that in any of my teachers’ coverage of the Vietnam War, I had never heard of one Asian American activist involved and implicated. Why was I allowed to believe that someone like Kiyoshi Kuromiya wouldn’t exist?

The idea that we need more representative history education in schools is such an easy argument to make that sometimes, it feels too obvious to make those demands in earnest. Surely the Stuyvesant administration is just on the brink of adding a course that tackles the staggering history that Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities have shaped and been shaped by, and we need only wait. Surely the Stuyvesant administration knows that they are seen as a leader in New York City’s public education system, and it’s just a matter of time before it gives its students, Asian and non-Asian alike, a space to dismantle the false frameworks that embrace being Asian American not as a political identity, but rather as a perpetual outsider. But on the off chance that this is not on the administration’s agenda—that this is not seen as an urgent problem—we’ll explore why AAPI studies help us understand ourselves in the context of larger systems that we have time and time again pushed back against. The best time to add this course would have been decades ago, but the second-best time is now.

The concept of courses like these did not arrive in the 21st century, or even with the strength of the Black Lives Matter and Stop AAPI Hate movements in recent years. The Third World Liberation Front drew inspiration and momentum from the Black Power movement and after students led a five-month strike on the campus of UC Berkeley in 1969, succeeded in establishing a Department of Ethnic Studies “dedicated to the underemphasized histories of African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos/Chicanas, and Native Americans.”

There is already more than one successful model of culture-focused classes at Stuyvesant to implement this. An Asian American studies course would join the ranks of well-loved, popular-for-a-reason courses like Jewish History and History of the Islamic World, not to mention the pilot AP African American Studies course (APAAS) that kicked off last school year. APAAS did not have to fight hard to be my favorite class last year, not only by nature of it being interdisciplinary, exposing us to layered bodies of writing along with long-withheld information, but also because conversations regarding personal experiences informed by broader history spurred naturally and genuinely. An Asian American Studies course could similarly invite discussion instead of rote memorization and encourage students to articulate ideas that are personal to them in an academic setting to seek collaborative reflections from the rest of the class. What’s more, implementing this course is not only precedent but law: Assembly Member Grace Lee, who represents District 65—the district neighboring Stuyvesant High School—and State Senator John Liu passed a bill last April to mandate that Asian American history be included in the curriculum of New York public schools. On the bill, Liu stated, “It is a critical step in dismantling the endless barrage of anti-Asian stereotypes that categorize Asian Americans as either the perpetual foreigners or the seemingly-benign but equally destructive model minority.” Refreshing, especially when compared to the rhetoric four years ago of politicians like Andrew Yang, whose Washington Post op-ed suggested Asian Americans “step up” and prove their patriotism to combat racism during the COVID-19 pandemic—respectability politics at their finest, eerily echoing what Japanese-Americans were told during World War II and exactly the sort of talking point that we let fly when we don’t learn our history of fighting back.

In this same vein, Asian American students want and deserve to learn about better models for activism instead of merely the palatable “Stop AAPI Hate,” an organization with strong affinities for police power and the carceral state. An AAPI studies course would allow us to tackle issues such as anti-blackness head-on by finally addressing such elephants in the room and show us that we’re capable of it as high schoolers that go to school with a predominantly Asian American student body.

One of the most important responsibilities of the education system to Asian American students is for them to come away learning more about their history and power instead of how to practice and perform the social identity of the model minority framework, a framework that has historically been used to diminish other communities of color. As student Grace Fang writes for her school newspaper at Wellesley College, “The myth of Asian American economic success was propagated by the US around the 1970s to discourage civil rights movements and encourage division among minorities [...] On the flip side, this myth also provides excuses for the US to avoid their responsibility for the welfare of Asian Americans.” One of the model minority framework’s tenets is that Asian American students are self-sufficient and can figure out what they need to know about their history on their own time. The hope is that with a course like this, students might feel more encouraged to ask for help and recognize the barriers that alter their perception of what they can and can’t do, such as engaging in activism. 

The ripple effect of an Asian American studies course that encourages students to ask more of their educational institutions can change the tide of low voter turnout rates in Asian American communities across the nation, as these communities ask more of their elected officials. Imagining the impact of a course like this is particularly salient as Democratic Party presidential nominee Kamala Harris runs to become the first Asian American and Black woman elected to the presidency. But on a local level, the day-to-day interactions students have with politics make arguments just as strong for specifically implementing this course at Stuyvesant: a school that aims to provide an education with college rigor. The conversations we have as growing young adults really put into view the impacts of the harrowing myth that Asian Americans are “apolitical.” 

This past summer, I left a canvassing shift for State Senator Iwen Chu’s campaign—the first Asian American woman elected to the State Senate—with my friend, who worried that her mother didn’t want her talking to strangers all the way out in Bensonhurst. It won’t matter that Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial demographic in the country if Asian Americans are also the demographic that feels left behind by their education and political systems and internalize the message that neither includes them. However, while riding the subway with my friend, we talked about why we wanted to keep going while sharing how proud it makes us feel with our parents. The next day, my friend returned to canvass, this time with another friend. If we don’t have access to these courses, we will continue to build this education ourselves. But, we shouldn’t have to.