Why Anti-Racist Education Must Include Asian American History

This is a commentary on why anti-racist education must include Asian American history, especially in the wake of increased hate crimes against Asians and anti-Asian bullying in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first half of the paper discusses the issue and how the absence of Asian American history in K-12 and teacher preparation programs plays a role in perpetuating racism against Asians in the U.S. The second half of the paper presents how I have incorporated Asian American history into a social foundations of education course through two legal cases filed by Chinese Americans: Tape v. Hurley (1885) and United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), landmark cases that have significantly contributed to the expansion of equal education and civil rights in the U.S. I also briefly describe the different pathways of Chinese and Irish immigrants who together built the transcontinental railroad and how this history illustrates the construction of whiteness. In sum, I argue that it is about time that we include Asian American history in our curriculum to undergird the work of anti-racist education. To teach Asian American history is to more fully understand how America’s racial order is reproduced and maintained precisely through the erasure and/or willful ignorance of histories like ours