[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 91 (Thursday, July 14, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 14, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 RACE RELATIONS AND AMERICANS FROM ASIA

  Mr. BRADLEY. In the past 3 years, I have given a number of speeches 
about race relations in America. They focused primarily on a black-and-
white portrait of America. Today I wish to broaden that view and talk 
about Americans whose ancestors come from Asia. I wish to do it in a 
way that is forthright, historical, personal, and in a way that 
challenges all of us to think about the incredible potential of 
America's increasing diversity.
  A young Chinese-American girl during the late 1960's was discussing 
the civil rights movement in a schoolyard with two of her friends. One 
was black, and the other was white. As the conversation became more 
animated, the African-American girl turned to the Chinese-American girl 
and said, ``You gotta decide, are you black or white?''
  For too many Americans whose ancestors come from Asia, this story 
rings familiar. Asian-Pacific-Americans live in a country where 
minority means black and bilingual means Spanish-English. Some 
Americans do not even register that Asian-Pacific-Americans are even a 
thread in our national fabric, and many more only see them through 
stereotypes and caricatures, ranging from the gifted math and science 
students and the so-called model minority myth, to exotic geisha girls, 
Bruce Lee and kung fu and waiters serving moo shu pork in the local 
Chinese restaurants. Stereotypes, both positive and negative, about 
Asian-Americans abound, but they hardly eliminate the complexity of 
their cultures or their social contributions to America.
  Asian-Americans have a rich history in the United States. In the 
1850's, the blood and sweat of 10,000 Chinese immigrants built the 
transcontinental railroad. Japanese-Americans in the early 1900's were 
a dominant force in California agriculture, producing up to 90 percent 
of some crops while controlling only a tiny fraction of the State's 
fertile farmland. More recently, from ice skater Kristi Yamaguchi to 
playwright David Hwang, Asian-Pacific-Americans have been achieving 
success in politics, business, academia, sports, and the arts. And 
since I have been in the Senate, four of my colleagues have been Asian-
Pacific-Americans--and Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii has become one 
of the most respected Senators of the last 50 years.
  Mr. President, like most Americans, I have felt the impulse to 
consider nonwhites as fundamentally different from me. Only contact and 
interaction has taught me the stupidity and foolishness of those views. 
With African-Americans, that contact began in childhood and matured in 
the reading of American history and deepened in professional basketball 
when I lived with African-Americans day in and day out on the road in 
America. With Asian-Americans, that journey began with the fascination 
for that which was different from what I had known growing up in a 
small Midwestern town. It matured and deepened in college when I roomed 
with a second-generation Japanese-American who was born in a stable at 
the Santa Anita Racetrack on his way to a World War II internment camp 
in Poston, AZ.
  My roommate had a way about him that invited openness and manifested 
genuine interest in other human beings. He was a sensitive friend. Both 
of us had served as student leaders, grown up with deeply religious 
mothers, and shared a love of sports and history. The only real 
difference was that he was Japanese and I was Scotch-Irish, which 
ultimately was no difference at all. The more we talked, the more I 
realized what we held in common and the more familiar I became with his 
hopes, not for his race but for himself as an individual.
  Then I would see how other people reacted to my roommate by 
consistently denying his individuality. I saw the hurt look on his face 
every time someone called him ``Odd Job'' after the Asian character in 
a James Bond movie of the time and the anger he showed when the dean of 
students asked him to speak to the board of trustees about the 
experience of a foreign student at Princeton. In search of his own 
identity, he knew he was American, but either from ignorance or 
prejudice, many white Americans seemed to deny him that birthright.
  My roommate rarely talked about the camps, but partly out of 
catharsis and partly as a service, in 1971 he wrote a book called 
``American in Disguise.'' It told of how he spent his first few years 
in an internment camp and how he lived his entire life having to deal 
with racism in America.
  It was a sad, honest, angry, insightful, and accurate book. During 
the summer of 1971 he did a book tour. I accompanied him one evening to 
a call-in show at a TV station in St. Louis, MO. I was not prepared for 
the hostility that followed.
  Caller No. 1: ``If Mr. Moto''--not his name--``if Mr. Moto does not 
like America, tell him to go back to Japan.''
  Caller No. 2: ``I don't know why you're complaining; you've done well 
in America.''
  Caller No. 3: ``I lost my husband at Pearl Harbor. You can't trust 
these Japanese. How do we know what you say about these camps is true? 
I don't trust you.''
  Caller No. 4: ``Tell the Japs they're lucky we didn't drop another 
atomic bomb on them.''
  Caller after caller spewed out irrational hatred toward the Japanese. 
None apparently registered that my roommate was American, not Japanese. 
Their failure to appreciate history was an extraordinary denial of 
historical record. If the truth teller did not look American--that is, 
Caucasian--it seemed he was not believed. It would not be the last time 
that I observed such reactions, and always it would be painful.
  Even today in 1994 whites and blacks see different looking eyes and 
go blind to individuality, blurting out such comments as, ``Why don't 
you go back where you came from?'' ``We are out of jobs because of 
you.'' ``Hey, China doll.''
  In 1991, I heard a story of a Japanese-American Girl Scout troop that 
was selling cookies outside a suburban grocery store in California. One 
passer-by who refused to buy any of the cookies said, when he refused 
to buy, ``I only buy from American girls.''
  To understand such an insensitive comment requires a knowledge of the 
history of Asians in America. The 19th century image of America as a 
melting pot did not include immigrants from Asia. The torch-bearing arm 
of the Statue of Liberty was raised toward Europe and the Atlantic. A 
similar welcome was not extended westward across the Pacific.
  In the beginning, Asian-Americans have been ostracized by white 
Americans. When California became a State in 1850, its constitution 
made it legal for cities to expel and segregate Chinese. It also 
restricted employment of Chinese workers and denied Chinese the right 
to vote. Oregon and California did not ratify the 15th amendment to the 
Constitution until the mid-20th century because their politicians 
reasoned that to support giving the vote to African-Americans would 
necessitate enfranchising Chinese-Americans.
  As a source of cheap and hardworking labor, Chinese by the 1870's 
became a favorite target of white labor unions that pushed for their 
ouster from the State. Congress responded by passing the Chinese 
Exclusion Act of 1882 making Chinese ``aliens ineligible for 
citizenship,'' stripping them of all legal rights, and prohibiting 
nearly all immigration of Chinese to the United States. As Chinese 
immigration declined after 1882, the United States looked to Japan for 
cheap labor to work in the orchards and fields on the west coast and 
Hawaii.
  Japanese success in agriculture led to the second anti-Asian 
backlash. In 1913, the California State legislature passed the alien 
land law aimed at the Japanese, prohibiting aliens--to use that name--
from buying land or leasing it for more than 3 years.
  Pressure from California officials led to the gentleman's agreement 
of 1908 with Japan in which both nations agreed to decrease Japanese 
immigration to the United States. In 1924, the Asian Exclusion Act 
passed by this Congress barred all Japanese and other Asian immigration 
from permanent residence.
  Other laws denied the Japanese citizenship, barred them from certain 
jobs, and kept them from marrying whites. These attitudes culminated in 
1942 when war hysteria compounded historic racism and led to one of the 
sharpest blows to constitutional rights in the history of this country, 
the internment without evidence of disloyalty of 120,000 Japanese-
Americans. In addition, Japanese-Americans were asked specifically to 
forswear allegiance to the Emperor of Japan.
  Gene Oishi has written that asking second generation Japanese-
Americans to take a loyalty oath was ``comparable to asking Joe 
DiMaggio, the son of Italian immigrants, to forswear allegiance to 
Mussolini.''
  Asian Indians were also included in America's anti-Asian xenophobia. 
Pursuant to the naturalization law of 1790, which said only whites 
could become citizens, the Supreme Court in 1923 stripped a Sikh from 
California of his citizenship on the basis that Hindus were not ``free 
white men.''
  Mr. President, I know that these historical facts are painful for 
anyone who believes that pluralism is America's strength. But to ignore 
them would deny us a chance to get this behind us. Only coming to terms 
with them will free us.
  Since the Immigration Act of 1965 eliminated national origin quotas, 
we have seen a new era of Asian immigration. Asians are the fastest 
growing minority group in this country. In the 1980's over 3 million 
Asians immigrated to America, doubling the Asian-American population. 
In my State of New Jersey, the Asian-American population grew 162 
percent in the 1980's.
  Such waves of immigration make it more important than ever for us to 
see that we are no longer a society of just two races, and to 
understand that diversity is the basic component of what it means to be 
an American. In the coming years, contributions to American society by 
Americans of Asian and Pacific descent will become increasingly 
important. These recent immigrants from Asia differ significantly from 
their predecessors. Most now come as intact families with the intention 
of settling here permanently, and about a third are professionals.
  Moreover, post-1965 Asian immigrants have originated from more Asian 
countries. While immigrants from India, Korea, and China come to the 
United States in search of economic opportunities, others from Vietnam, 
Cambodia, and Laos, have fled unstable political conditions in their 
home countries. The vast difference in experience and perspective 
between a Hmong refugee from Laos who arrived with no understanding of 
the concept of written language, and an established fourth-generation 
Japanese-American whose families have been in the United States longer 
than many European groups, is the range of diversity in Asian America.
  Despite this diversity, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino, 
Indian, Korean, and Cambodian-Americans, along with the Americans from 
the islands of Polynesia, find themselves continually being lumped 
together and defined as one unified group. To force the over 60 
different Asian groups under one label is the height of ignorance and 
racial stereotyping, and makes about as much sense as calling a Scot a 
Euro-American.
  One of the most prevalent stereotypes that ignores the diversity of 
the Asian-Pacific-Americans is the model minority myth which says that 
Americans of Asian descent are the healthy minority, the smart 
minority, the self-sufficient minority, the hardworking but silent 
minority. In many respects, statistics back up the model minority myth. 
Asian-Americans have the lowest divorce rate of any racial group, the 
lowest teenage pregnancy rate, the highest median family income, and 
the lowest rate of unemployment. Moreover, the number of Asian-owned 
businesses has increased nearly 1,000 percent from 1972 to 1987.

  But a report released last month also revealed that southeast Asians 
have the highest rate of welfare dependency of any racial or ethnic 
group. More than 30 percent of all southeast Asian households are on 
welfare, and among some groups, like Cambodians and Laotians in 
California, the percentage on welfare skyrockets to 77 percent.
  Moreover, although the median family income for Asian-Americans is on 
a par with that of whites, the figure can be misleading. Asian-
Americans live disproportionately in areas where the cost of living is 
above the national average, and high family income is also related to 
relatively larger families.
  Being classified a ``problem-free minority'' can also create tensions 
with other minority groups. ``Why can you not be more like the Asian-
Americans?'' blacks and Latinos are told? As a result, Asian-Americans 
have become targets of anger, creating a backlash in relationships with 
other groups of Americans. The greater the success of Asian-Americans, 
the more some whites and some blacks resent them. When economic times 
are tough, the seemingly positive attributes of the ``model minority'' 
suddenly get turned against Asian-Americans, and the hardworking, 
resourceful, and dedicated, suddenly become ruthless, diabolical, 
fanatical.
  Today, the most blatantly discriminatory laws have been dismantled, 
but prejudice against Asian-Americans remains and phobic attitudes 
persist. For example, the taboo against interracial marriage dies 
slowly. It is cloaked with superstition, tribalism, and often just 
plain racism. How race should be prohibitive when two people fall in 
love has always been a mystery to me. Irrational attachment to race 
purity is found in all cultures, including some Asian societies, but in 
America it fused with bizarre theories about white supremacy to produce 
an explosive mix of emotion and law.
  Today, many Asian-Americans experience more subtle forms of 
intolerance. Height requirements, such as those used by some police and 
fire departments, bar Asian-Pacific-Americans from many jobs. Many 
prestigious colleges have been accused of imposing new admission 
standards in order to limit the number of Asian-American students. 
Glass ceilings in corporations block too much Asian-American talent 
from fulfilling the potential of its abilities.
  Asian-Americans often become, also, a convenient scapegoat. Take 
Japan-bashing, for example. With the recent failure of United States-
Japan trade talks, it could reappear. The U.S. economy is experiencing 
monumental transformation--the end of the cold war, the influx of 
millions of new people into the world marketplace, the emergence of the 
knowledge revolution, and the continued buildup of our national debt. 
Americans are understandably feeling vulnerable.
  At the same time, Japan has erected barriers to its markets. Japan 
owes it to its consumers and to the world to open its markets. We must 
be clear and firm in our policy toward the Japanese Government. But 
making Japan our scapegoat is not the answer. Inflammatory rhetoric 
helps no one. The Japan-bashing phenomenon becomes more and more 
disturbing with each politician's slip of the tongue and each Honda-
bashing party that the media covers. What these critics of Japan must 
realize, given the disproportionate role of race in American society, 
is that anger toward Japan risks turning into hostility toward our 
fellow citizens. Increasingly, the brunt of anti-Japan sentiment falls 
not only on Japanese-Americans, but because many non-Asians fail to 
make a distinction among Asian-American nationalities, it falls on 
Asian-Pacific-Americans as a whole. For example, the first highly 
publicized instance of brutal anti-Asian violence was the 1982 murder 
of Vincent Chin. Chin, a 27-year-old Chinese-American, was bludgeoned 
to death in Detroit by two unemployed auto workers who blamed layoffs 
in the auto industry on the Japanese.
  Even with the increasing presence of Asian-Americans in such places 
as San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and New Jersey, Asian-Americans 
are constantly questioned about their Americanness. Because they look 
different from Caucasians such as German-Americans, Irish-Americans, or 
Italian-Americans, they are often asked, ``well, where are you from?'' 
Or they are told, ``gee, you speak English very well.'' They are 
continually viewed as foreigners. Maybe that is why they are often left 
out of discussions about race relations in America. They, like my 
roommate many years ago, are not even seen as Americans by a white 
majority or a black minority.
  In its most frightening form, these attitudes result in racist 
violence. In 1987, a Cambodian-American teenager in Lowell, MA, was 
drowned by a youth shouting racial slurs. Also in 1987, a group of 
youths attacked and killed Navroze Mody, an Indian-American man; the 
youths were affiliated with a group called Dotbusters, referring to the 
red dot many Indian women wear on their foreheads. In 1989, a Chinese-
American named Ming Hai ``Jim'' Loo was beaten to death in Raleigh, NC, 
by a number of white men who blamed him for the Vietnam war. In October 
1992, a Chinese-American man was beaten on a bus in San Francisco by 
five African-American teenagers, who yelled, ``Chink,'' and ``get the 
Chinaman.''
  Mr. President, I have recently spoken out about the violence that is 
plaguing our country--not just in our cities, but also in suburban 
malls, on college campuses, and between husband and wife. While all 
violence must be condemned, a new wave of hate violence is particularly 
disturbing.
  According to a 1992 report by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, 
although Asians made up 4 percent of the population of Philadelphia in 
1988, they were the victims of 20 percent of the city's hate crimes. In 
1993, there was 335 reported anti-Asian incidents, including 30 
homicides, or nearly one incident every day in this country.
  But Asian-Pacific-Americans are beginning to fight back. In 1988, 
Japanese-Americans won a long and hard-fought battle to regain their 
dignity and a rightful place as American citizens with the passage of 
the Civil Liberties Act. This legislation gave a national apology and 
monetary compensation to the surviving Japanese-Americans who were 
unjustly taken from their homes on the West Coast and interned in camps 
solely on the basis of their ancestry. Such an acknowledgment is true 
progress.
  More recently, Bruce Yamashita challenged one of the oldest 
institutions in this country--the U.S. military. In 1989, Yamashita, a 
third generation Japanese-American from Hawaii, fresh out of Georgetown 
University with graduate degrees in law and international relations, 
enrolled in the Marine Corps Officer Candidate School. Yamashita's 
idealistic aspirations of serving his country were shattered when he 
was subjected to onslaughts of racial barbs and verbal abuse from his 
sergeants at OSC: ``You speak English? We do not want your kind around 
here. Go back to your own country.'' Other superiors insisted on 
speaking to him in broken Japanese, often calling him by the names of 
Japanese products, such as ``Kawasaki Yamaha Yamashita.'' One sergeant 
ordered him to change into a dirty uniform before his final company 
review board, knowing that it would jeopardize his evaluation. After 9 
weeks of OCS training and 2 days before graduation, Yamashita was 
kicked out for unsatisfactory leadership.

  Charging racial harassment and discrimination Yamashita challenged 
his dismissal. After two Marine Corps reviews and an offer of 
commission that he found unsatisfactory, Yamashita appealed to 
President Clinton last fall for a full resolution of his case. In 
December 1993, Navy Secretary John Dalton overruled the Marines and 
authorized that Yamashita be commissioned as a captain. Five years 
after his ordeal began, at a March ceremony in the House of 
Representatives, Yamashita was commissioned as a captain in the standby 
reserves. No longer silent, Yamashita won his battle--another step of 
progress.
  Forcing people to fight for the right to be treated as human beings 
is a colossal waste of energy and talent. By the year 2000, only 57 
percent of the people entering the work force in America will be 
native-born whites. It is their children whose economic future will 
increasingly depend on the talents of nonwhites. The considerable 
talents of Asian-Americans will help all of us advance if we allow them 
not only a place at the table of performance, but also a place at the 
table of acceptance. To stigmatize, to stereotype, and to abuse Asian-
Americans is to deny ourselves the possibility of our best future.
  Americans also need to see how our diversity is a peculiarly American 
strength, available to virtually no other nation. I was at a conference 
in Europe recently and the Europeans kept referring to Americans, 
Mexicans, Canadians, Brazilians, and Venezuelans as ``New Worlders.'' 
``You New Worlders,'' they said. I asked them, ``What do you mean by 
that?'' They said: ``In Europe, increasingly, nationality is defined as 
ethnicity. In the New World it isn't.'' To which I say thank God.
  American nationality is not ethnic; it is creedal. We ask our 
citizens to subscribe to a set of principles etched in the Declaration 
of Independence and the Constitution, not to produce their pedigrees. 
No country is so open, and this is a source of tremendous strength. 
These rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, do 
not accrue only to a certain race or ethnicity, but to a qualified 
person of any race who steps forward and says, ``I'm American.''
  Our growing Asian-Pacific-American population is one of the keys to 
our future success in the international marketplace. The Pacific Rim 
offers us unlimited opportunities for American export markets, not to 
mention potential partners in tackling the global problems of human 
rights, the environment, technology, and population control.
  In Asia, our immigrants can be our guide to the cultural rhythms of 
the fastest growing area in the world economy. Given competitive price 
and quality, that knowledge can give American goods the edge in Asia. 
If American companies can draw on the world for our talent, our pool 
will be much larger than it would be if we, like the Japanese, confined 
our talent search to a few universities and one racial strain.
  Our diversity can mean more jobs and more prosperity for all 
Americans if we can seize the moment. But to realize that promise, we 
have to see people. We have to see human beings, not the color of their 
skin or the shape of their eyes. We have to see human beings for what 
they are as individuals and as Americans.
  To encourage contributions to our Nation's future from Americans of 
Asian descent requires a commitment from each of us to get beyond the 
stereotypes, to move past simplistic discussions of race relations 
which only recognize black and white, to realize the depth and 
diversity of the many different people we call Asian-Pacific-Americans, 
to reach out to the Asian-American physicist in New Mexico, garment 
worker in San Francisco, doctor in New Jersey, restaurant owner in 
Chicago, and teacher in Los Angeles, to recognize that the surnames 
Nguyen, Patel, and Chang are just as American as Kennedy, Johnson, and 
Bush, to speak out against anti-Asian talk and violence where we hear 
or see it, to realize that contact brings understanding, and like my 
roommate in college, prejudice withers in an air of friendship. And 
when that happens, Americans from Asia will be a living, contributing, 
and integrated part of American life. And we will, in every way, be a 
richer society because of it.

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