OPINION
Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
May 16, 2016
Volume 26 Number 10
May 16, 2016
ISSN: 1094-9453
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n Dmae Roberts
History makes a difference
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ost of the time, I think the growing-up
process for young people is hard. But
sometimes I envy them for being able to
live at a time when there is a whole month
designated to recognize the heritage of Asian
American and Pacific Islanders
(AAPIs). For more than a decade,
the month of May for me has been
a strange mixture of missing my
mom on Mother’s Day and
honoring the cultural heritage I
inherited from her. When she was
alive, AAPI month celebrations,
like those that are now held in
May, did not exist. I think she
would have enjoyed attending
heritage events and learning
more about the culture and
traditions of all AAPI ethnicities.
When I was growing up, Asian-
American history wasn’t taught
in school. I learned about Chinese
railroad workers on “Kung Fu,” a
1970s television show about a
biracial Shaolin monk played by
white actor David Carradine. My
first exposure to the Japanese-
American internment was during
a television movie called Farewell
to Manzanar. It wasn’t until I was
an adult that I learned about the
exclusion laws enacted in the
mid-1800s in America that continued until 1943.
Initially, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act barred the
immigration of Chinese laborers to the United
States. Chinese workers who had laid railroad
tracks across America were allowed to stay. This
law opened the floodgates for anti-Chinese violence
including mobs of people chasing out the Chinese in
Oregon City and Portland.
These days it’s more common to meet interracial
families, but when my parents married, interracial
marriage was illegal. The Supreme Court didn’t
outlaw anti-miscegenation laws until 1967.
Interracial marriages were banned in Oregon in
1866 between anyone who was more than
one-quarter Chinese or Hawai‘ian or more than half
Native American. It was previously illegal for
whites and blacks to marry.
Today, young people want to learn about their
ethnic history. Locally, the API Leaders for the
Liberation of Youth (ALLY) organization got
Portland Public Schools to adopt their youth-led
ethnic studies resolution and implement it into the
M
school curriculum. In Southern California, youth-
led petition drives gathered thousands of
signatures to require the Los Angeles Unified
School District to add ethnic studies classes. For the
most part, however, AAPI history is still minimally
taught in public schools.
Since the ’90s, when May was
officially declared a heritage
month, I’ve tried to help create
programs and events highlighting
AAPI history, whether it was for
public radio or theatre or in my
personal writing. Yet it’s still an
uphill climb. The mainstream
public might know about Black
History Month in February from
PSAs on national television, but
many people are still not aware
that May is nationally designated
as a heritage month for AAPIs.
After my mother’s death, I took
on the production of the first
Asian-American history series on
public radio. Called Crossing
East, the project spanned three
years and featured eight hours of
documentaries focusing on 50
scholars, producers, and artists.
Hosted by George Takei and
Margaret Cho, it aired on 230
public radio stations, many of
which had not featured Asian
Heritage Month programming before, and received
a Peabody Award in 2006.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 10 years since the
series premiered. In recognition of the 10th
anniversary, rebroadcasts of the series are planned.
On Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) radio, it will
be featured on Tuesdays at 10:00pm for eight weeks
beginning May 24; on KBOO radio, it is airing from
10:00am to 6:00pm on Memorial Day (Monday, May
30). I’m currently embarking on building the “Cros-
sing East Archive,” a multimedia website available
to the public that will house the 300 hours of
oral-history recordings created for the series.
When I think back to some of my projects and
pieces over the past three decades, I wonder if they
amounted to anything. At the same time, I feel I
should preserve them just in case they do matter. So
I’ve been gathering my old works to document them
permanently as well as give them new life. Soon
they will be released to the world. I’ve also compiled
many of my essays about growing up as a biracial
Continued on page 7
Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.