Moving Asian American Narratives From the Periphery to the Center of History Education

• In Event: Centering Students' Racialized Experiences: Shifting Paradigms in History Education

Abstract

The chapter proposes AsianCrit (Chang, 1993) as an analytical lens for teachers to debunk and disrupt white Eurocentric history education and charts out ways to transform history curriculum toward one that heals not hurts students especially from marginalized communities. As a conceptual paper, the method of inquiry entails reviewing literature from AsianCrit that discuss curricular treatment of Asian American histories and the danger of exclusive curriculum. The chapter then delineates AsianCrit-informed principles for teaching Asian American histories critically, which is followed by implications for research and practice.

Specifically, AsianCrit is a theoretical outgrowth from critical race theory and offers a refined set of tenets that help identify and challenge anti-Asian racism and white supremacy as its root cause (Chang, 1993; Iftikar & Museus, 2018). Applied to history education, AsianCrit provides a theoretical lens to explicate and critique curricular exclusion and mistreatment of Asian Americans (author, 2017). From an AsianCrit perspective, the white supremacist society racializes Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners who will never become a part of U.S. society or as a model minority who do well in school and society and thus need little help (Iftikar & Museus, 2018). This racialization creates an audience who is unsympathetic to the needs and struggles of Asian Americans and makes a call for teaching Asian American histories seem unwarranted or inappropriate. Furthermore, when included, the curriculum mirrors the dominant societal racialization of Asian Americans, presenting Asian Americans as a foreign threat or model minority (author, 2017).

Curricular exclusion and misrepresentation of Asian American is not a trivial matter. First, the exclusive curriculum sends a message to students that Asian Americans have little value and place in the United States, thus killing the spirit and humanity of Asian American students (author, 2020). Second, the exclusive curriculum allows and promotes physical violence against Asian Americans by reinforcing the dominant racialization of Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners who can be expelled and punished when they are perceived as an existential threat to “Americans” (author, 2020). This possibility of physical violence is painfully observed in the spike of anti-Asian violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Baselessly accused as the cause of the pandemic and dangerous foreigners, American Americans have been shunned, taunted, yelled at, spat on, beaten, and killed (Stop AAPI Hate, 2021).

To stop anti-Asian violence and racism as well as white supremacy at its root, AsianCrit calls for teaching Asian American histories with a critical lens (author, 2017). Specifically, the AsianCrit tenets of counterstory and re/constructive history justify using Asian American histories as counterstories to disrupt white history curriculum and re/construct a more honest and humane curriculum. The tenets of transnational contexts, intersectionality, and strategic (anti)essentialism help the re/constructed histories attend to the transnational, intersectional, contentious natures of the Asian American experiences. Such a re/constructed curriculum would then contribute to ending Asianization—racialization of Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners and the model minority—and advance the social justice project of dismantling white supremacy.

Author

• Sohyun An, Kennesaw State University
  Presenting Author