Andrew Yang rankles with essay on 'American-ness'

In an opinion piece written by Andrew Yang and published in The Washington Post in early April, the Chinese American former presidential candidate, offered suggestions as to how his fellow Asian Americans could better survive the racial alienation and hostility that has intensified since the COVID-19 outbreak in the country, pointing to what Japanese Americans did during World War II.

"During World War II, Japanese Americans volunteered for military duty at the highest possible levels to demonstrate that they were Americans," Yang wrote, calling on all Asian Americans to demonstrate their "American-ness" as a way to fight racism.

"We Asian Americans need to embrace and show our American-ness in ways we never have before. We need to step up, help our neighbors, donate gear, vote, wear red white and blue, volunteer, fund aid organizations, and do everything in our power to accelerate the end of this crisis," he wrote.

"He is so wrong historically," said Charlie Lai, executive director of the Chung Pak Local Development Corp, who's responsible for providing housing to low-income senior citizens in Manhattan's Chinatown area. Lai was pointing to the fact that although an estimated 33,000 Japanese Americans served in the US military during and immediately after the war, the country also put into incarceration 120,000 of its citizens of Japanese ancestry at exactly the same time.

"His argument is self-defeating," Lai said, referring to Yang's call for his fellow Asian Americans to show that "we are part of the solution".

"As Yang himself has pointed out, some 17 percent of US doctors are Asian and rushing to the front lines, so we are already there, already part of the solution," he said. "We are doing this putting our lives at stake to save our fellow Americans — in the face of people saying that we are the problem. We are not holding back because the president called it 'the Chinese virus'. But they have been holding it against us."

"If people are bad, they need to change their behavior for the entire community — whether it's community in the neighborhood or the community of America itself — to exist. If they don't change their behavior and belief, there's nothing that we could do," he said.

Calling Yang's remarks on "American-ness" the "most upsetting part" of his article, Nancy Yao Maasbach, president of the Manhattan-based Museum of Chinese in America, said that what that line has done is to negate the very existence of being "an US citizen with Asian heritage".

"Are you telling me that if you like to have dim sum and tea for breakfast, then I'm not American enough?" she prompted."It makes you think that apple pie and ice cream are the only American way, that there's one way to be American and that we have to change to conform to that way, which ultimately is the way of the white Americans.

"We have to realize that 'the Melting Pot', the very traditional post-civil-rights-movement concept, is not what we're trying to go for these days," she said, referring to the efforts by a previous generation of immigrants to be assimilated into what they saw as the mainstream American society.

"Today, people understand that that narrative is broken. The closest thing we want now is to think about a mosaic where every piece of the glass is individual and special and makes up this perfect pattern, or a symphony orchestra where every single instrument is vital but distinct and works together to create something that moves mountains," she continued. "What Yang has said is absolutely going to inflame not just Asian Americans, but any American who believes in the mosaic and the orchestra."

Early in his article, Yang told of his recent encounter with three men outside a grocery store. Detecting "something accusatory" in the eye of one man who looked at him and frowned."For the first time in years", Yang wrote, "I felt self-conscious — even a bit ashamed — of being Asian".

"Why do we need to be ashamed as a person anywhere?" said Lai. "So it's about him as an individual that he has never fully felt comfortable for who he is as a human being, an American and an Asian American, even as he ran for president."

However, not everyone disagrees with Yang. Eugene Moy, an amateur historian who's closely associated with a number of Asian American NGOs, including the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, believes that "what he's saying is that it's important to not be afraid and to get out there to assert ourselves as Americans by doing our part for the country.

"It's not our fault that those people who harbor racist thoughts are simply being ignorant," Moy continued. "And that level of ignorance is really not something that we can easily fix. So we have to stand up, be visible and be public."

Lai offered his thoughts:"I'm not saying that it's not my fault, it's always your fault," he said. "People who are trying to make good societal changes are always trying to find a better way, a way of encouraging progress. So we have to actively participate to change society. In some way what Yang is saying is true. But I think that we are already part of the cure and will continue to do as much as we can."