China News Agency, Beijing, July 5th: Why does the United States need to establish a national museum of Asian Pacific American history and culture?

  ——Interview with Zhao Xiaojian, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and a famous scholar of Asian American studies

  China News Agency reporter Luo Haibing Shi Yuanfeng

  The National Mall in the center of Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, is a gathering place for many important historical and cultural landmarks.

This open national park has dozens of museums, federal government buildings such as the Capitol, as well as some famous monuments, memorials and sculpture groups.

The National Museum System, a part of the Smithsonian Institute, was created in 1846 and has become more pluralistic in recent years.

In addition to the original American History Museum, Art Museum, and American Indian Museum, the new African American History and Culture Museum is the most eye-catching new landmark.

Currently, the National Museum of Latino America is also being planned.

In the first half of this year, both houses of the U.S. Congress passed the "Research Act for the Creation Committee of the National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture" (HR3525).

On June 13, local time, Biden signed the bill.

  "Establishing a national museum of Asian Pacific American history and culture will help the American public and visitors from around the world understand the unusual history of Asian Americans in the United States and their contributions to American society." University of California, Santa Barbara Zhao Xiaojian, a professor at UCSB and a well-known scholar of Asian American studies, said in an exclusive interview with China News Agency "Dongxi Wen" recently that Asian groups have a long history in the United States, and the establishment of this museum is very meaningful in the current political environment.

The following is a summary of the interview transcript:

China News Service reporter: From a historical perspective, among the five major ethnic groups in the United States today, what are the similarities and differences between Asians and other ethnic groups?

Zhao Xiaojian:

In the United States, Asians are a group of people of color.

People of color are defined by two aspects: demographic origin, race, and color are one aspect; socially construct is the second.

  Unlike African Americans and Native Americans, the concept of Asian Americans is not entirely dependent on race and color.

This ethnic group originates from East, Southeast and South Asia, and has different languages ​​and cultures.

Early racial scholars classified South Asians (who were regarded as Indians in the early days) as the Caucasian race, not the so-called yellow race represented by the Mongolian race.

  We can understand the concept of Asian American in terms of social construction.

Before 1970, the U.S. government classified Indians as Caucasians, and later defined them as Asians.

South Asian immigrants have historically been discriminated against and ostracized like East Asian immigrants.

Therefore, the definition of Asian Americans in the United States is easier to understand from the perspective of people of color.

Every person of color has a unique history in the United States.

Asian Americans immigrated to the United States in the mid-19th century, when slavery was about to end.

But they were not white, and later, like African-Americans, they all experienced extreme injustice.

A rally against discrimination against Asian Americans in San Mateo, San Francisco Bay Area.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Liu Guanguan

China News Service: Why does the United States need to establish a national museum of Asian Pacific American history and culture?

Does American society know enough about Asian American history?

Do Asian American groups and their descendants know enough about the history of this group?

Xiaojian Zhao:

The United States currently has the National Indian Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

In 2020, the President of the United States signed the law establishing the Latino Museum of America.

It would be a major shortcoming if Asian Americans did not have a national museum of history and culture among major minorities.

  The role of Native Americans and African Americans in American history cannot be ignored, and Americans are exposed to their history starting in elementary and middle school.

But the introduction to Asian American history is very recent.

I barely came across this aspect of my Ph.D.

Asian-Americans have a unique history and have made invaluable contributions to the process of American society.

Less well-known is the experience of Asians as people of color in the United States, such as the early Chinese who were oppressed in the United States.

The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed in 1882, explicitly restricted the entry of Chinese immigrants. This racist immigration law was later applied to Japanese, Koreans, and Indians, and was not gradually repealed until 1943.

Even now, American society's acceptance of Asian Americans is limited.

Some Asian-American families have lived in the United States for generations and are still seen as "permanent foreigners" and not trusted.

This is not the same as white immigrants from Europe.

But many Americans, including descendants of Asian descent, do not understand this history either.

A performance at the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in San Francisco.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Liu Guanguan

China News Agency reporter: From the passage of the bill to the implementation of the project, what other processes are there?

How long is it expected to take?

Zhao Xiaojian:

It took seven years from the proposal of US Congressman Grace Meng to establish a National Museum of Asian-Pacific American History and Culture in 2015 until Biden signed the legislation.

  Two years ago, we built a Chinese history exhibition hall at the California State Museum. After the funding and other issues were settled, the planning took four or five years, and the scale of the museum was much smaller.

It will take at least ten years to build this national museum.

China News Agency reporter: You have been engaged in the research of Chinese and Asian American history for a long time, and you are well versed in the history of racial discrimination in the United States. What is its historical root?

Zhao Xiaojian:

Racism is rooted in the history of Western colonialism.

In colonial Western texts and literature, the inhabitants of places like Africa, Asia, and the Americas were seen as barbarians.

British Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling wrote a well-known poem titled "The White Man's Burden".

The poem treats the colonists as people of color and describes them as half-devil and half-child (half devil, half child).

In the eyes of white colonists, groups of people of color are vulgar and uncivilized.

This notion permeates colonial literature, comics, and scholarship, laying the foundations of white supremacy.

  Repeated negative portrayals of colonial peoples formed a deep-rooted prejudice against people of color in Western culture that persists to this day.

Achieving racial equality in legal texts can be done, but it is difficult to eliminate the awareness of racial prejudice.

This is the biggest challenge facing a racially diverse country like the United States.

Anti-Asian Hate March in New York, USA.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Liao Pan

China News Agency reporter: Two years ago, you planned a Chinese history museum for the California Museum. What content did you display?

Are museums playing an active role in bridging differences and easing antagonisms?

Zhao Xiaojian:

The Museum of Chinese and American History we curated in San Clermonto, the capital of California, is a permanent pavilion of the California Museum.

The exhibition is divided into three parts: the first part is the experience of the early Chinese in the United States; the second part is their situation during the period of Chinese exclusion; the third part is the changes after World War II, especially since the Civil Rights Movement.

I started working on the third part and then had to take on the whole project when another planner resigned due to illness.

  The planning of the content of the exhibition hall seems simple, but it is not easy to do well.

It takes a lot of work to think about how to present the subject matter to be persuasive.

The planning of the National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture is a lot of work.

There are different groups of Asians, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islanders.

This project requires a lot of effort and negotiation.

  Nowadays, the amount of information in online media is very large, but there are few things with depth.

History museums can make up for this phenomenon.

Our exhibition in the state capital of California was visited by more than 2,000 people on the first day of its opening, and now it receives a large number of primary and secondary school students and tourists every day.

It is difficult to reach so many people by publishing a book or lecturing.

This is the combination of education and tourism, which is a more influential public education.

China News Service reporter: In addition to establishing the Asia-Pacific History and Culture Museum, what other measures are there to help dialogue and integration between different ethnic groups in the United States?

Zhao Xiaojian:

A series of social violence and conflicts in recent years illustrate the complexity and persistence of race relations in the United States.

Studying history, understanding the historical roots of racism and white supremacy, and recognizing the dangers of racial hatred and prejudice to society is an important step in eliminating racial barriers.

What America has achieved today is the result of the collective efforts of people of all races.

The indigenous peoples of the Americas lived on this land for 10,000 years long before the so-called "discovery of the New World", and the historical oppression and exclusion they and Africans, Asians, and Hispanics have been subjected to cannot be forgotten. .

Only by eliminating prejudice and hatred against people of color is it possible to build a truly free, democratic and harmonious society.

  Since the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, Asian Americans have risen in status and been dubbed the "model minority" title.

However, the prejudice against people of color in society has not changed. The prejudice against Asians, distrust and the recent incidents of hatred against Asians show that the improvement of individual social status does not protect their rights.

Asian Americans must express their political demands and strive for racial equality.

  The experience of people of color is an important feature of American history, and looking back can help to explore the socio-historical roots of white supremacy.

Therefore, I especially hope that this Asian Pacific American History Museum can be built in Washington as soon as possible.

(Finish)

Interviewee Profile:

  Xiaojian Zhao: Doctor of History, professor, famous scholar of Asian American studies.

He graduated from Fudan University and the University of California, Berkeley.

He is currently teaching at the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where he serves as vice provost.

Focusing on the various invisible boundaries that distinguish social groups, he proposes unique perspectives in research on Chinese and Asian American history, the political economy of race and immigrant ethnicity, the Chinese educated youth movement, and urban-rural relations.

The original English version of Rebuilding Home: Chinese Society in America in Turmoil won the Best Historical Book Award from the Asian American Studies Association.