Race, Rights, and the Asian American Experience

Rating:
Summary: A Legal Look at a Social Issue
Review: Ancheta does not pull any punches. This is a serious book and it deals with serious issues. Race, Rights and the Asian American Experience is defined by its strong views and lucidity. Ancheta offers a sketch of the history of discrimination against Asian Americans, this writer suggests though that for a more robust narrative the reader would have to turn to the likes of Ronald Takaki and tackle something in the area of Stranger's From a Different Shore. Ancheta moves to outline what he defines as a legal subordination of Asian Americans. Deftly articulating the insidious impact of nativism on race relations and the production of citizenship. Ancheta leaves no one out as he takes aim at the very Constitution itself outlining that it "can... restrict the scope of anti-discrimination laws." Ancheta argues that all these so called anti-discrimination laws do not consider the inherent racial bias contained therein. Ancheta sees race as a dynamic, social construction as opposed to something intrinsic or natural. Moreover, Ancheta points to the shifts in the demographic landscape as perhaps the single most significant force responsible for problematizing the black-white bifurcation. As a case in point, in Ho v. San Francisco "model minority" is a handicap to those defined as such.

In perhaps the most telling of cases in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), Ancheta glosses over it but he does not miss the significance of the cases. Ancheta posits that we have come far since the 1790 Nationality Act that allowed only "Free White" aliens to be admitted to U.S. Citizenship yet more work has to be done. Even well the turn of the century, in Ozawa v. United States (1922) and in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), Japanese Americans as well as Asian Indians both failed in their push to be classified as white so that they could obtain citizenship. Since only whites could become citizens, there was a race to prove that one was "white." Ancheta writes: "In United States v. Thind, the Supreme Court ruled that Asian Indians were barred from naturalization, even though scientific evidence at the time indicated that Indians belonged to the Caucasian race. The popular conception of Caucasian, the Court noted, clearly excluded Indians: "It is a matter of familiar observation and knowledge that the physical group characteristics of the Hindus renders them readily distinguishable from the various persons in this country commonly recognized as white." The Court also indicated that the racial bar applied to other Asians as well: "There is much in the origin and historic development of the statute to suggest that no Asiatic whatever was included"" (24). Feeling that Ancheta was going to take this further, I was disappointed in that it seems clearer than ever that the rulings were devoid of any real basis in law and fact but rather relied on "familiar observation and knowledge" as if some 'common-sense' hegemony ruled over such things as objective science and the law.

It is argued by some critics that Ancheta ignores a wider global perspective. I argue that despite the very international scope of the book, globalization and such issues is not within the thesis or framework of the book. Ancheta should be commended for his groundbreaking piece.

Miguel Llora

Rating:
Summary: Excellent read
Review: Why America Should See More than Black & White By Samuel R. Cacas

Race, Rights & The Asian American Experience By Angelo N. Ancheta, Rutgers University  Press:  1998, 224 pp, Hardcover.

        While taking a civil rights class in law school during the late 1970s, I felt cheated by what I felt was a significant gap in the course and text material which almost exclusively focused on the achievements for and by African Americans.  As a very politically conscious Asian American in college, I knew that while immigrant groups like Asians were a very minuscule minority population-wise in this country, they had still made a significant contribution to the eradication of "Jim Crow" policies and other racial segregation laws.

    And I would often expound on such contributions  during class.  For instance, the Yick Wo v. Hopkins case - in which a  Chinese American laundry owner in San Francisco successfully sued to  overturn a racially discriminatory city ordinance - has been cited in countless legal briefs and court cases involving the Fourteenth Amendment1s Equal Protection clause.  Or U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark which has long been the major legal precedent establishing birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment.  While my civil rights teacher and fellow classmates were warm and respectful to my tendencies, I still felt the contributions of non-Black minority groups deserved to be covered more thoroughly in print. So reading civil rights lawyer Angelo Ancheta's "Race, Rights & The Asian American Experience" was a refreshing affirmation of my daily, righteous meanderings in that civil rights class.         Ancheta pulls no punches in citing his motivation for writing this ground-breaking text on civil rights and race relations.  In the book¹s preface, he relates his racial experiences growing up in San Francisco during the 1960s:  racist landlords that limited the sections of the city where his family could live, discriminatory employment practices which prevented ! his parents from the career they desired, and the endless anti-Asian racial taunts he endured throughout elementary and high school.  And even when such experiences receded as he grew older, Ancheta was still exposed to significant, though subtle, forms of racism such as law school classmates who marveled that Ancheta - a second generation, American-born Filipino American - could not understand Chinese or Japanese.     The book's bifurcated focus - how Asian Americans are affected by civil rights laws and how civil rights laws are affected by Asian Americans - forms the basis for why all Americans should read this book even if they are not of Asian descent.  If anything, they will come away with a more encompassing mind-set on civil rights that accommodates the racial experiences of the fastest-growing minority group in this country. A major polemic addressed throughout the book is the problem that civil rights protections available to Asian Americans are most often contingent upon the rights granted to African Americans.  In effect, says Ancheta, Asian Americans "have been treated primarily as constructive blacks," forced to make "unseemly, curious choices" when they sue for their civil rights, such as asserting that they are white in order to attend the best public schools.     But Ancheta emphasizes that periods where Asian Americans were treated by courts as "honorary whites" were "short-lived and more unusual." And not always beneficial.  The recent exclusion of Asian Americans from affirmative action programs due to their repeatedly being lumped with whites is an example of the latter, according to Ancheta, even where "Asian American still face racial discrimination and remain underrepresented." Such exclusions are built into all civil rights protections and policies which are premised largely premised on the color discrimination premised on the treatment of African Americans.  While such bias may apply to Asian Americans, Ancheta contends, the stigma! of being labeled foreign-born - even if one is American-born - has been one of the primary bases for Asians in this country being the target of hate violence, media-based stereotypes, as well as benefit-entitlement laws like California's Proposition 187 premised on citizenship, among others. Ancheta¹s solutions for such racial inequities which feed on the anti-Asian tendencies in the law and among most Americans is very concrete:  develop new laws or amend old ones that rely on theories that comprehend the complexity of race relations beyond the black-white racial paradigm.     Essentially this means including immigration status in hate crime laws. As well as recognizing that discrimination can be based on ethnicity and being labeled and treated as foreign-born, not just race.  In asserting such remedies where the interracial friction involves African Americans as victimizers, such as the current conflicts occurring between Asian Americans and African Americans in San Francisco's housing projects, Ancheta encourages transracial, innovative solutions such as the Asian Law Caucus suing the city housing authority instead of racially targeting individual tenants.  After all, he posits, "expanding the civil rights agenda to include Asian Americans cannot come at the expense of African Americans."     While presented in tightly written, sometimes analytical prose, this book could probably be well understood to the average lay person not well-versed in the law.  Many of the principles Ancheta expounds on are based on real-life stories that Ancheta and other Asian Americans have lived.  Stories, along with perspectives, often missing in the media1s coverage of important issues such as immigration, affirmative action, and hate violence.  Their absence in headlines as well as history books are complemented by the law¹s insensitivity to immigrant groups such as Asian Americans.  And Ancheta addresses that insensitivity very eloquently.