The Chinese Freedom Schools: The Conflicted History between Lau and Brown

• In Event: Reconciling Erasure Within Lau: Asian and Asian American Reparations in Multilingual Education

Abstract

Objectives
The purpose of this study is to examine the history of the Chinese Freedom Schools of San Francisco, a representative movement in Chinatown’s call for language rights in the lead-up to Lau. In 1971, the Chinese Freedom Schools were quickly assembled in opposition to mandatory busing. The media and school district framed the Chinese as racist, asserting that Freedom Schools usurped the aims of Brown. Yet, such positioning of the Chinese dismisses their resistance based on a history of exclusion, leading to their busing boycott. The Freedom Schools was Chinatown’s call for self-determination and autonomy (language rights), a logic that would later galvanize the implementation of Cantonese bilingual education in the public schools.

Theoretical Framework
Asians have long been constructed along a plane of valorization and subjugation in relationship to Whites and people of color (Kim, 1999). Further Asians are racialized as foreigners, unwilling to assimilate; a co-naturalization of race and language (Flores & Rosa, 2015). LangCrit provides analytic tools, detailing how racial and linguistic identities are imposed, negotiated and claimed (Crump, 2014).

Methods
This study uses narrative portraiture methodology to capture Chinese and Chinese American educators, activists, and scholars’ narratives and how they experienced the formation of the Chinese Freedom Schools (Author, 2024; Curammeng, 2023; Rodríguez-Dorans & Jacobs, 2020). The case is bound to a short period of time (1971-1973) when the Chinese Freedom Schools opened in spite of Brown and as Lau was progressing through the courts. Interviews were conducted with Chinese and Chinese American students, educators, activists, and scholars involved with Chinatown’s Freedom Schools. Primary documents from the schools and press were also collected. Data was analyzed to identify how institutions, participants, and the press imposed, negotiated or claimed Chinese racial and linguistic identities within the Freedom Schools movement.

Findings
As the Chinese Freedom Schools preceded Lau’s passage, their formation illuminated how racial and linguistic equity had seemingly disparate aims. The Chinese Freedom Schools, while short-lived, demonstrated that SFUSD imposed Chinese as countable students of color, eligible for busing, while dismissing their language rights. The assumption: Children could receive a Chinese language-education after school. But, when bused far from Chinatown, unable to return in time, parents contested this as improbable. The separate Freedom Schools provided a bilingual education in Cantonese and English, supporting their self-determination and autonomy, a key construct of language rights. SFUSD only afforded them with language access with minimal or no language services under busing. The Chinese negotiated and claimed their linguistic and racial autonomy, centering their arguments in language rights over mere access. The Freedom Schools set important precedent in distinguishing between language rights and access; enabling them to later compel schools to scale Chinese bilingual education, and thus, able to claim their linguistic and racial identity.

Scholarly Significance
Participants argued that Brown negated their language rights and those supporting Brown argued that Lau usurped the objective of racial equity. This argument still resonates today, but within a racially resegregated landscape and where schools continue to focus on language access over rights.

Author

• Trish Morita-Mullaney, Purdue University