History of Asian Americans for School Curriculum: Immigration, Immigrant Lived Experiences, and Cross-Racial Solidarity Narratives

• In Event: Healing the Body and Healing the Soul: Testimonies of Asian and Asian Americans' Experience of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States

Abstract

This paper examines the deeper reflection of history of Asian Americans in the US. The path of reflection is through the role and the curriculum actions initiated by the Immigrant History Initiative. This organization is a non-profit entity that produces curriculum focused on immigrant histories and works with schools and communities, that models sustainable coalitions among citizen-scholars. The study utilizes various lesson plans texts created by this organization. The discussion covers themes surrounding Asian Americans as a virus, Asian immigration, citizenship and immigration law and enforcement, and Asian exclusion. The study seeks to bring the importance of immigration in shaping the US as a nation and the significance of immigrant lived experiences and narratives to an identity as an American, as well, the cross-racial solidarity narrative to fight discourses of hate into both the school curriculum and the curriculum of the colleges of education. In these colleges, teachers are educated institutionally and trained to further interrupt and renew how we learn and think about race, migration, and social justice.
Perspectives used in the study include racial formation theory. This theory emphasizes “the socio-historical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed” (Omi & Winant,1994, p. 55). Race is described as a verb rather than a noun, emphasizing on “production rather than destiny“ (Kyung-Jin Lee, 2008, p. 1551).
References
Omi, M. & Winant, H. (1994). Racial formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Kyung-Jin Lee, J. (2008). The transitivity of race and the challenge of the imagination. Modern Language Association, 123(5), 1550-1556.

Author

• Dinny Risri Aletheiani, Yale University