"All Power to the People" Social Movements for Justice

http://allpower.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/discussion-asian-american-movements-1/

""All Power to the People" Social Movements for Justice" is a blog run by a Pomona College professor whose students discuss topics reviewed in their history course on. I found this discussion on injustice towards Asian Americans through out the years informative. I viewed it as a reliable source because the students do refer to the titles of books they have read in addition to their thoughts and opinions stated in the posts. One post in the discussion by student Abbie Wang caught my attention specifically among all the posts I read:

"What resonated with me the most from discussion was the issue of identity that the Asian American movement faced. There was a subset of this issue brought up in class that concerned where Asian Americans’ loyalties lay—whether it was with their ethnic country or with the country where they lived. I think this loyalty was a more immediate issue because of the greater amount of immigrants that came to the United States at this time. Several of them still had strong connections to their ethnic countries and identities, yet had to assimilate into American society in order to support themselves. Immigrants also faced a problem with the American-born Asians—on what level could they connect with them, and perhaps more importantly on what level could they not? Something that was brought up late in class today about Amy Uyematsu’s “The Emergence of Yellow Power” related strongly back to differences between immigrants and American-born Asians. Someone mentioned that Uyematsu was calling out Asian Americans for being “soft-spoken” and allowing the whites to take advantage of the “silent oriental” stereotype. While I am not disagreeing with this, I think it’s important to look at this through the eyes of the Asian immigrants as well. At least in particular, in Japanese culture and lifestyle there is much less emphasis on the individual and speaking out against those in control is not encouraged. Changing from this lifestyle to the outspoken American one can be jarring, and I think it is an important factor to keep in mind when we look at the different Asian American experiences."

Wang brings up a point relating to a prevalent issue many Asian Americans faced in their communities. Identity has always been huge issue for many Asian Americans as they have to deal with the conflicting ideas of Asian culture and what is perceived to be American culture.