Tomorrow night (Monday May 11) PBS is doing a two night series called "Asian Americans" It looks at the complicated history from the building of the Transcontinental Railroad to present day and how Asians have gone from despised and discriminated to considered a model minority. It covers such things Exclusion Act, Japanese Internment and also the siege of Koreatown during the Rodney King Riots. This is history that many Americans including Asian Americans don't know. Most Asians, like my family, came here after the Exclusion Acts and Civil Rights. My parents and my generation are the ones called the Model Minority but we wouldn't have had that chance without the struggle of Asians immigrants before us. I know there are a lot of Asian American Clutchfans and this is important history for us to know. https://www.pbs.org/show/asian-americans/
OP, I’m glad this is happening and we plan to catch it. I’m also a little surprised given even the little I know that’s it’s only two parts. Korea, Vietnam, Japan, China, India, Laos, on and on. Each with at *least* one very separate immigration thread from the others.
Yep you could do a whole season. I'm still glad to see PBS taking this on. Two years ago they also had an excellent piece on the Chinese Exclusion Acts. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/chinese-exclusion-act/
That was put on Asian-Americans to contrast them to other groups particularly blacks. There are a lot of Asians who buy into it that Asian American success is due to Asians work ethic, valuing education and also that Asians didn't rock the boat and protest. That ignores that there were Asians who protested and that the opportunities Asians had many are due to that civil rights lifted barriers that also kept Asians back. This is covered in the show. https://www.npr.org/sections/codesw...d-as-a-racial-wedge-between-asians-and-blacks
Really? What I read is that Asians also participated in the Civil Rights movement. That that participation is often forgotten or ignored, but also contributed to their current situation. He might believe what you said, but he didn't say that.
Naw, He said it. Model Minority was a thinly veiled attack on African Americans. They would say if Asians could do it then there were no racial disparities or racial discrimination. Stuff like that.
Personally I don't believe in the model minority stereotype and I don't believe there is one. Asians aren't inherently more intelligent than anyone else and while Asians have succeeded beyond what our percentage of the population would be that has more to do with what type of Asians are here. Most Asians are a self-selected group of the most ambitious and educated from Asia. Most us also came at a time when the opportunities were available because of Civil Rights. For the Asians who were here before they certainly weren't a model minority and suffered from the same discrimination that other minorities did such as redlining and being kept out of many jobs. On top of that there also were Exclusion Acts that kept the number of Asians down and Japanese Internment that essentially wiped a generation of economic achievement of a large segment of the Asian Americans. In addition to previous discrimination that held down Asians groups like the Hmong that came here as refugees haven't found instant success because they are Asians. Most Hmong were illiterate farmers and have had a long and difficult adjustment. As such there still are many Hmong living in poverty and beset by crime. Hmong aren't lazy or just looking for government handouts but they didn't come here with the advantages that many other Asian immigrants have of coming from families who already had education and skills. A lot of this is covered in the Asian American series.
Yes there were (this is also covered in the series) but Civil Rights was primarily a movement of African-Americans and white American allies. Asians were there and contributed which should be remembered by history but most of the work was done by non-Asians. The main reason is that there just weren't that many Asians as most Asians didn't come here until after Civil Rights. The stereotype though is that Asians success is through hard work and not rocking the boat. The "model minority" isn't just about Asian success but also that Asians aren't troublemakers. This is an attitude that many Asians, particularly older ones, believe in. It was very present in the 90's when racial tensions between Asians and blacks were very high.
This is off topic, sorry. Have you watched Warrior on cinemax it touches on the plite of asians before the exclusion act and the need for civil rights. Enjoyable show, good fights.
Yep. Just saw the first episode yesterday. It's entertaining and glad that it's out there but it feels like Asian "Django Unchained". It's more about coolness and attitude than history. Also with all the great Hong Kong stars out there why'd they cast mixed race British / Japanese actor to play a Cantonese immigrant. On the plus side it does live up to Skinemax reputation..
It starts to get into the other stuff as it goes along and I think it will be a driving force in the 2nd season. I like that they show the friction between the Irish and the chinese that is really pointed out throughout the season. the main character is supposed to be mix race his grandfather was white I don't know about the Japanese thing but he is a good actor for the part IMO. It is more than Asian Django Unchained it has a twist coming up soon.
"Asian American" is a huge umbrella and too general in many respects. They differences between the Vietnamese Americans and Chinese Americans is as wide as the difference between Chinese Americans and any other group really. I appreciate the attention being provided, but the cultural differences and the type of life in the USA between those that came from Vietnam in the 1970's is in many ways different than say Japanese Americans. We are not talking about the differences between Western Russians and Eastern Poles or even Germans. The differences are really large. I hope at some point our country is strongly aware of the differences. I have been guilty too, as growing up my friend was Taiwanese and for years I believed he was Korean. I was young, and he simply did not talk about his immigrant parents. They were very nice to me, but they also were trying very hard to Americanize.
i remember watching a coverage of the 2018 asian games and then they showed the arab and central asian participants, and i was like wut.
I've only seen the first episode and am planning on watching the rest of it over this week. I'm definitely interested and will give it a chance but wasn't blown away by the first episode. The main character is played by Andrew Koji who is mixed British Japanese Ancestry. When I first saw him I almost yelled "They pulled another David Carradine!" (when David Carradine was cast over Bruce Lee for Kung Fu) . I remember the line that his Grandfather was white. That seemed like a bit of a throwaway to explain how he could speak English.. His Martial Arts is OK, but so far not impressed with his acting, he seems pretty wooden. One thing though if they want to unite the Irish and the Chinese they could reveal the main character is actually mixed British / Japanese since at that time both the Chinese and the Irish hate the British and the Chinese also hate the Japanese.
