- You know, in the last few years,
there have been more than 10,000 documented hate crimes
against Asian Americans.
When you look at really the data that shows Americans' attitudes
towards Asian Americans,
you can see the cost of the invisibility of Asian Americans
in our curriculum.
A recent survey showed that 42% of Americans,
when they're asked to name a famous Asian-American,
the number one answer was "I don't know,"
the number two answer was Bruce Lee,
and the number three answer was Jackie Chan,
who isn't even American.
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- Narrator: As a country,
the inability to recognize Asian Americans as American
has dangerous consequences.
- One of my female students said that she was at a store,
and a man came up to her and screamed at her
to go back to where she came from.
And this was frightening for my, you know, teenage student
who didn't know what this man was gonna do.
And she was also upset as to why this person thought
that she should go back to where she came from
when she was born in this country
and she had lived in Wisconsin her entire life.
And I realized that, you know, for this man,
people that look like me are foreigners,
they're perpetual foreigners.
- Narrator: Growing up without representation
can make students feel like they don't belong in a country
they were born in, causing all sorts of identity issues.
- I grew up like a lot of Asian Americans here in the Midwest.
My whole life, I never wanted to be Asian.
In fact, I wanted to be white for the longest time.
And when I started teaching, you know,
the curriculum was all of the classic writers
and none of them looked like me, and I was comfortable with that
because that's what I grew up with.
And it wasn't until the last few years
that I really started, you know, questioning that
and to try and present authors that looked like my students.
One of the things that I've learned in my teaching career
is that how we grew up and how we were taught
greatly impacts the way that we teach.
And if you'd never had Asian American visibility
in your school curriculum,
then that's a blind spot that you're not really aware of.
I think half the battle is really just being aware
that there is an issue.
And then the other half is really accessing
the growing library of resources that's developing.
- Narrator: Including Asian Americans in your curriculum
will provide the needed representation
for those students, and it also provides visibility
toward your non-Asian American students.
This can help mitigate
the "perpetual foreigner" association,
along with bias and hate language
that can accompany that.
- We deconstruct an essay by Cathy Park Hong
about "The Slur I Never Expected to Hear in 2020."
And she talks about the fear that she had
as the, you know, wave of anti-Asian hate crimes
was sweeping across the country.
And I got an email at the end of the day from a student
who is very thoughtful and very quiet and is not Asian.
And he talked about, you know,
how he had never heard about this issue.
And he was really grateful for me bringing this up
and for me talking about it in class,
and I think that's the most powerful lesson in all of this
is that we don't do diversity work just for our kids of color.
I think it's incredibly impactful and powerful
for all kids, not just our kids of color.
- Narrator: In addition to including
more Asian Americans in your resources,
you can also give students the chance to have conversations
about identity and erasure.
- Here in Wisconsin,
we have the third largest Hmong population in the country.
And we had an 80% increase in Asian American,
Pacific Islander populations since our last census.
So the Asian American community has grown dramatically
in our state.
You don't have to be Asian American
to talk about Asian American identity issues.
I think the most important thing
is to provide a safe space for students
to feel comfortable sharing what they know
and sharing, well, also what they don't know.
And that is the one thing that I've learned in my teaching
is that, you know, kids are hungry to have discussions
that are about important issues
that they see in our society today,
and the students these days are not afraid of those discussions.
That's the message that I hear time and time again
from my students is that, you know,
visibility and representation are critical.
- Narrator: How can you create more visibility
for your Asian American students?
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