2ns-generation Asian Americans embrace identity, enrich area

May 4, 2008 - The Detroit Free Press

They grew up in a crescent around Detroit, with some scattered inside the city like stars.

They grew up the children of immigrants, traversing two identities fraught with self-imposed barriers and subtle discrimination.

They grew up into a new consciousness, calling themselves what previous generations did not: Asian Americans.

Like no other generation before them, this wave of Asian Americans had access to college classes that examined their histories, courses that arose in the aftermath of a cataclysmic movement that started in Detroit. U.S. census data released last week showed that Asian Americans continue to be the fastest-growing ethnic group in Michigan, topping Latinos, the fastest-growing minority in the nation. And this generation, now in their 20s and 30s, is a huge reason why.

Their upbringing has been complex, veering from a near-shunning of identity toward a full embrace of what it means to be fully American and fully Asian.

Asian Pacific American Heritage month, which is celebrated in May, evolved from a 10-day observance in 1978 to a monthlong celebration in 1992 as members of this generation shaped their Asian-American experience.

"Our generation fought for all different things," said Stephanie Chang, 24, who was raised in Canton Township and lives in Detroit. "We're the first ones to have Asian-American studies in college. We're the first generation with resources to Asian-American organizations, and we're the first who are Pan-Asian. We're not just divided by ethnic groups that, while in Asia, went through centuries of all kinds of conflict."

All this was made possible by that now-iconic Detroit-based movement, one that began when a spurt of prejudice turned violent.

Finding a voice

In 1982, the baseball-bat slaying of Chinese American Vincent Chin on Woodward by two white autoworkers who mistook him for Japanese and their subsequent light sentencing -- neither served jail time -- set off a coalescing of Pan-Asian groups throughout metro Detroit and the nation.

Anger overcame fear, and Asian Americans found a voice.

"It really became a national movement, a civil rights movement, that had Detroit at its epicenter," said community activist Helen Zia, 55, who cofounded the American Citizens for Justice, whose mandate was to address what it saw as the unfairness in Chin's case. Zia, who now lives in California, later included her experience with the Chin case in her book, "Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People."

"It's amazing," Zia said, "but in some ways, because the Detroit community was so small and because it had such a strong civil rights history, it meant that people had to depend on each other. ... The community really stepped up and became a model around the country."

Booming generation

Even as tens of thousands of people leave metro Detroit, the Asian-American population has shot up by 38% in six years, according to U.S. census data reported for 2000 and 2006, to 141,550 people from 102,365.

Why? In large part, it's because the generation of identity-conscious Asian Americans has boomed. A 2002 study by Wayne State University showed that American-born Asians nationwide, particularly among Japanese, Chinese and Filipinos, are starting to outnumber the foreign-born.

The children of the large waves of Asian students and professionals who immigrated after the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 and the easing of immigration law and national quotas in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the thousands of southeast Asians who fled after the Vietnam War, have rapidly expanded the area's Asian population.

"The Asian-American population is enriching the metro Detroit area and changing our understanding of race so that it's not just black and white. It's contributing to the area's economic revival," said Frank Wu, the outgoing dean of the Wayne State University Law School. "These are people who are entrepreneurs and professionals."

"You're also finding that these are families that are settling in as part of the mainstream, so they're transforming our understanding of what the mainstream is," added Wu, author of "Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White."

Integration, assimilation

At less than 4% of metro Detroit's total population, Asian Americans still make up a small percentage of the area.

Growing up Asian American in metro Detroit is far removed from places like San Francisco, where one out of every three people is Asian, or like New York, where Asians can buy food in burgeoning Indian neighborhoods in Queens. Or even like Chicago, whose thriving old and new Chinatowns serve as an anchor to urban and suburban Asian Americans.

Asian Americans in metro Detroit often were the only Asians in their grade, if not the entire school. The result was a kind of de facto integration for Asian Americans.
"As a kid, you just wanted to fit in," Chang said. "All my friends were white, except on Saturdays."

That was the day Chang's mother made her go to Chinese school.

"It was like these double lives," she said, "and I never wanted them to intersect."

Elizabeth Chin, 35, who was born in Louisiana and grew up in West Bloomfield, found herself so enmeshed with her non-Asian friends that she nearly eschewed her Chinese Baptist church roots.

"Who I wanted to be was Jewish," said Chin, who now lives in Waterford. "I was Jewish. I really thought I was Jewish."

Ami Turner, 29, whose parents emigrated from Gujarat, India, was born in Detroit and grew up in Sterling Heights with mostly white and Arab-American classmates.

"I had fairly fair skin and dark hair, and a lot of people thought I was Arabic," she said. "When I first went to high school, all the Arabics had their own little groups, and they thought I was Arabic, so they hung out with me. And then when they found out I wasn't, I got phased out."

Wu, 40, grew up in Canton Township doing everything he could to forget who he was.
"Every kid has to make a deal, and the deal goes like this: 'If you become like us, we'll accept you as an equal. If you don't, we'll reject you,' " said Wu of Detroit. "So I accepted the idea. I assimilated. "

Sparring stereotypes

Despite attempts to fit in, a pervasive experience for all Asian Americans means coping with derogatory remarks about race.

Chang endured a nickname of "Shanghai" from a mean-spirited classmate, even though she was born in Canton Township and her parents emigrated from Taiwan. She still cringes when the first thing she's asked is, "Where are you from?" with the follow-up of "Where are you really from?" when people are not satisfied when she answers "Detroit."

"People ask over and over," she said. "It's like the answer has to be a certain country. We're the perpetual foreigner."

Al Itchon, 38, of Clinton Township grew up in East Detroit, now known as Eastpointe. His parents emigrated from the Philippines, but "everyone thinks I'm Chinese." Growing up, he said, "there was one other person who was Asian, and everyone always thought we were cousins."

Chin, whose mother immigrated from Hong Kong but whose father and paternal grandmother were born in the United States, still has to deal with people who come up to her and strike fighting stances.

"I don't know Kung Fu!" she said, and referencing another stereotype, adds: "I'm not that stinkin' smart!"

Culture, identify, experience

Somewhere in the lives of these second-generation Asian Americans, usually in their teens and 20s, something formative happens that makes them acculturate -- not into American culture but into Asian-American culture.

Soh Suzuki, 29, was born in California, lived his elementary school years in Japan, and moved to Bloomfield Hills for high school because of his father's job.

His Asian-American awareness grew at Michigan State University, when he began incorporating Asian-American history and culture into his artwork for his major. He took an Asian-American anthropology class, learned about the repercussions of Vincent Chin's murder and started thinking about his own identity.

"I wasn't even sure if I could identify myself as an Asian American," said Suzuki, who now lives in Detroit. "There was a time even in college, when I saw myself as Japanese and as kind of an international student. But as I looked into how identity politics work, at some point, I came to a consensus within myself that American culture and American identity is very flexible. And so is the Asian-American experience."

After college, Suzuki cofounded the Detroit Asian Youth Project, which works with Asian-American kids who live in the city to help them explore their identities through art and oral history.

For Wu, the killing of Vincent Chin propelled him toward a lifelong exploration of Asian-American identity.

"That case made me realize that I had to do something," said Wu, who is working on a book about Chin's murder and aftermath. "It set me on the path to becoming a writer and a lawyer. Everything about my life changed because of that case. It gave me a sense that I wasn't alone. ... I saw that it was racial prejudice. As a kid, when you're taunted, you think, 'Maybe it's me.' You see a case so blatant and so clear that you say, 'Wait a minute, it's not me. It's much bigger than me.' "

Elizabeth Chin remembers feeling fear at the Chin murder, especially because she shares a last name (but no relation). It also was an awakening of her identity.

"It brought to my attention that I was Asian," says Chin, who was 10 at the time. "Before, I had never thought about it. I was just this kid going to school. The color TV was really turned on."

Holding tight to heritage

Chin now sees herself as a bridge, using Cantonese to help first-generation Asians gain access to things like retirement benefits in her job as claims representative with the Social Security Administration. She and Chang, who completed an Asian/Pacific Islander Studies American minor made available a few years before her arrival at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, are working with APIAVote, which helps register Asian Americans in metro Detroit to vote. They envision the rapidly growing Asian community as an increasingly influential voting bloc, especially in a swing state like Michigan.

Turner has hung onto her heritage through 21 years of Indian dancing with the group Nadanta, something her parents encouraged her do to preserve a cultural connection.

"I'm very proud of being Indian," she said "That's what Nadanta taught us: 'Don't hide who you are.' "

It's something she has started passing onto her 23-month-old son, Rohan, and 4-month-old daughter, Isabella, who are their own genre of Asian American: Hapa, a term referring to multiracial Asians. It sometimes serves as an acronym for Half Asian Pacific American.
Turner's husband, Andy, is caucasian and Catholic, but she has preserved her Hindu beliefs, speaks Gujariti and Hindi, and has started passing down a mash of everything to her kids -- Christmas and Diwali, naan and hamburgers -- assembling the accoutrements that will shape them as Asian Americans.

Contact ERIN CHAN DING at 313-222-6696 or echan@freepress.com.