American History through American Lives

Introduction

This social studies unit is motivated by my beliefs that social justice must be successfully taught to children at an early age, both at home as soon as appropriate, and in school starting with kindergarten. As the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) rightly noted, teaching “hard history” is one effective way to “dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people.”¹ Our history textbooks promote a deeply embedded culture of white supremacy, and teach students that marginalized groups like Asian Americans, NOT ONLY, did not contribute to the progress of America, but that their narratives literally DO NOT exist in our textbooks, therefore, DO NOT really matter. After reviewing nearly 3,000 U.S. history textbooks from 1800 to 1980, Professor Donald Yacovone of Harvard University wrote: “The assumptions of white priority, white domination, and white importance underlie every chapter and every theme of the thousands of textbooks that blanketed the schools of our country.”² One textbook even began with the title: “The White Man’s History.” In these textbooks, history is old and took place in Western colonization, revolution, constitution, party politics, and nowhere else. I echo the sentiments of Barack Obama’s John Lewis eulogy: “This idea that any of us ordinary people… can stand up to the powers and principalities and say, ‘No, this isn’t right; this isn’t true; this isn’t just. We can do better.’”³ Teachers have the duty to instill in their students the powerful message that when ordinary people stand up to wrong-doings, false narratives, and injustices, WE are constructing a better vision and future of our shared history.

Hatred and Xenophobia against Asian Americans

I was motivated to write this unit when I read the news that a man stabbed a 2-year old inside a Sam’s Club in Texas on March 14, 2020.⁴ The accused man allegedly tried to kill a Burmese family of four because he thought they were Chinese infecting Americans with the coronavirus.⁵ I was furious at the violent act. Soon, I became very afraid for my own American family of Chinese descent, my then-thirteen (13) Asian American 4th graders and their families, and all of my Asian American friends. I also started to worry about the safety of my Hispanic students who could have easily been mistaken as Asians; I said this because as a Chinese American, I had been mistaken as Hispanic a few times in my life. In America, people of color are the interchangeable minority, the interchangeable others, sometimes the forever foreigners, the undocumented and the illegal aliens, intellectually and culturally inferior, and so filthy and diseased that it has warranted being spit at while waiting for a city bus, to being sprayed with air freshener in a New York subway car, to being threatened with a baseball bat in the parking lot.

My race and Chinese ethnicity had made me an immediate target of fear and hate once I stepped foot on American soil in 1977. I remember that day - my parents solicited a willing friend who had a car to drive them to pick up my younger brother and me from the JFK international airport in Queen, New York. I remember sitting in the back of a family sedan looking over my shoulders as the Statue of Liberty faded into the background. My parents tried to shield us from racial discrimination by renting a one room apartment in the heart of Philadelphia Chinatown.

Was I then a part of the United States? Am I still? Is my life an integral part of American History? The answers have NOT always been a resounding “yes”; it took decades for me to feel a sense of belonging in this country. Now I can rejoice in my right to call myself American. As an immigrant student, I didn’t learn about the lives of Asian Americans in elementary or high school. It was through my own initiative that I started to read about events and issues concerning Asian Americans while I was in college. More specifically, I took a student-led seminar on nonviolence and social change, and devoted that semester to educating myself about the plight of Asian American women.

My curriculum unit is written not only for Asian American students and teachers. It is titled Boxing Asian American History because good teaching is personal as well as highly political. Great teaching sets the stage for students to be self-directed and regulate their own moral compass. Students of all races need to be challenged with American history that is inclusive, diverse, complex, difficult, and sometimes unpleasant. America is a land of immigrants from all over the world, but in our textbooks “American” mainly meant white and male. Most teachers, myself included, teach Social Studies with little to no resources and materials. My 20-year old textbook that is based on a history of “White Supremacy” is a disservice and an insult. One goal of this unit is to teach American history with narratives of real human beings who are rarely or have NEVER been included in our elementary school curriculum. American history has great achievements as well as great deprivations due to racial discrimination, hate, gender inequality, and brutality. Teaching “hard history” will help students to learn from our past’s mistakes as well as encourage them to face the despicable and morally repugnant events of our American history.