The AACP Newsletter |
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Since 1970 | Asian American Curriculum Project, Inc. - Books for All Ages | July 2003 |
Newsletter Home Page | Event Schedule | Editor's Notes | Featured Books |
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Editor's MessageHello everybody. To our new subscribers, thank you for trying the newsletter out. The AACP newsletter will vary widely from month to month in its articles, editorials, and book selections. Please hang with us as we try to address the entire readership's wide ranging interests.In next month's newsletter we hope to conduct a survey to better gauge what your interests are. In the mean time, please feel free to continue sending me your email comments and suggestions.
The Latest at AACP For this month's newsletter, a big thank you goes to the following interns - Lydia Chao, Steven Tanamachi, and Alice Tan. One last question - Philip and I for the last two newsletters have been writing about the National Archives and Records Administration and our research into our own family histories. Would any of you like us to continue with a part three to this series? Give us some feedback. Thanks.
Leonard Chan |
Up Coming EventsHere are some events that AACP will soon be attending. Invite us to your events.
Give Us Your FeedbackPlease feel free to send us your reviews, comments, and book suggestions. You can contact us at -aacpinc@asianamericanbooks.com |
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and Its Implication for Asian Pacific Americans An Editorial by Lydia Chao |
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Some call last month's Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action the most important educational case since Brown V. Board of Education. Though the court struck down the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions policy of assigning points to underrepresented minorities, it allowed the university's school of law to continue the use of race as a factor in admissions. With this ruling, the value of racial diversity won out over the idea of an equal playing field, at least in the case of college admissions. However, while the effects of the high court decision are apparent for some minority groups, what are the implications for Asian Pacific Americans (APAs)? A few months ago, Newsweek columnist George Will wrote about Asian Americans as the new victims of affirmative action. Equally, if not more, qualified Asian Americans would be displaced at the nation's top universities for more appropriate minority students. However, this is an oversimplification of the affirmative action story, stemming from the same line of reasoning that fueled the Berkeley College Republicans to hold an "affirmative action bake sale", where blacks were charged $0.25 for a cookie, Hispanics- $0.50 and so on. Whites were charged $1.50. Affirmative action is not about numbers. It's not about quotas. It's not about being fair or unfair to any particular group. The practice of affirmative action exists in order for minorities to overcome the institutionalized discrimination they face simply by living in the United States. Institutions of government, law, education, entertainment all exist with an inherent bias towards wealthy, white men that has not yet been overcome. For this reason, affirmative action needs to exist. However, how about Asian Americans? The so called "success story" of Asian Americans first made headlines in the 1980's and the model minority myth was born. All the evidence points to the conclusion that minorities can work their way up to become successful in the United States- just look at the numbers of Asian Americans in top colleges and in the work force. Numbers show that Asian Americans are graduating with business degrees and master's degrees in record numbers. Look at wealthy Asian American enclaves in California. Doesn't this prove that Asian Americans have made it?
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The idea of Asian American success is fallacious in more than one way. First, it ignores the glass ceiling faced by Asian Americans in almost every facet of the workforce. Asian Americans are nearly invisible in upper management positions as well as tenured teaching positions at top universities. The glass ceiling exists in a very real way for all minority groups- nowhere near broken, nor even reached, as opponents of affirmative action claim. More importantly, the simple inclusion of Asian Americans into one racial group ignores the needs of the different ethnicities and cultures that constitute Asian America. For example, the general statement that high percentages of Asian Americans attend college does not tell the whole story nor reveal the breakdown of ethnic groups. Looking at the demographics at Berkeley, the large Asian American population is primarily East and South Asian, with Pacific Islanders and Southeast Asians represented in much smaller numbers. The Asian American faculty includes few Southeast Asians and students have been fighting for a Filipino American professor to teach a Filipino American Studies course. In the general population, Chinese businessmen from the San Gabriel Valley near Los Angeles differs substantially from Hmong migrant workers in California's Central Valley or Vietnamese refugees in Louisiana. Categorizing all APAs under the same umbrella group (when comparing racial numbers) denies the existence of under-representation of many groups, especially in the area of college admissions. The biggest problem in using Asian American success in colleges and universities (especially top tier schools) as evidence against affirmative action is that the very term ignores the socioeconomic and ethnic differences that exist among Asian Americans, and does a disservice to those who are still struggling to achieve the equal playing field so often lauded as present upon immigration (or in some cases, finding refuge) to the United States.
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The following books are discounted for subscribers to our newsletter. The discounts on these books end August 7, 2003. |
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Polly Bemis
By Priscilla Wegars |
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Okasan & Me
By Cynthia Konda and Okasan & Me, Co. |
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Filipino Children's Favorite StoriesRetold by Liana RomuloIllustrated by Joanne de Leon 2000, 94 pages, hardback.
Book Description -
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Chinese New Year for KidsBy Cindy RobertsIllustrated by Yang Song and Jiayin Yu 2003, 30 pages, paperback.
Book Description -
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