“Beginning in the late 1960s, Asian-Americans nationwide were building social service institutions and feminist collectives, marching against the war, critiquing and sometimes even trying to overthrow the U.S. government,” said Ryan Wong, one of the curators of the exhibition “Roots: Asian American Movements in Los Angeles 1968–80s.”
According to Wong, it’s no coincidence that the term “model minority” was being coined around the same time the Asian-American movement was radicalizing a generation of young people. Groups of Asians protesting for their rights wasn’t the story most media outlets or social theorists wanted to acknowledge.
“The ‘model minority’ idea was used as a weapon against the social movements of the civil rights era, suggesting that activism wasn’t necessary if a group could only ‘work harder,’” he said. The Asian-American movement chronicled in the exhibition shatters that myth, he added.
Told through photographs, posters and oral histories, “Roots” shows how Asian-Americans formed civil rights organizations at colleges like UC Berkeley, fought against gentrification and ultimately banded together to form a new pan-Asian political identity.
“Until about 1968, you either identified with your country of origin ― mostly China, Japan, and the Philippines at that point ― or were lumped under the term ‘Oriental,’” Wong said. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Asian-Americans of different ancestral countries recognized their shared history of racial discrimination and realized they’d have a stronger voice together.