Amherst is in a unique position to change the course of America's history. Amherst is the only liberal arts college to make the top 10 in the National Bureau of Economic Research's rankings. We as an institution will be emulated by many other colleges and universities; we will be setting the tone for a generation of new students and scholars. Let's take this unique opportunity and ensure that America continues to thrive in the 21st century.
Opposition to such departments at other universities has come mainly from those who say that American Studies already can cover Asian American studies and that there's no need to "farm out" other ethnic fields, leading to a kind of "balkanization" of the college community into various segregated groups. The first problem with this kind of reasoning is that it assumes only members of a certain ethnicity will take these courses and fill these professorships. As the Black Studies department has shown, this notion is certainly not true. The second problem with this line of reasoning is that it underestimates the size of Asian American studies and its ability to be covered adequately within American Studies.
A few courses in American Studies will not be sufficient to prepare students for the inevitable economic rise of China and the impact it will have not only throughout Asia, but also America (and Europe) for the greater part of the 21st century. Asian American Studies is thus the appropriate rubric because we cannot look solely at Asia or Asians from an American point of view; we must also look at Asian transnationalism and diaspora studies. As we are an American college, we will necessarily be interested in how America fits into this equation, but to imply that America is the sole point of view and superior vantage point is to misread the future.
Furthermore, the diversity of Asia, Asian Americans, and America's historical, present and future relations to Asia is great. Asians include Chinese (including 55 main minority subgroups), Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians, Laotians, Singaporeans, Hong Kong Chinese, Taiwanese, Malaysians, Mongolians, Hmong, Iu Mien, Karen, Nepalese, Tibetans, South Asian Indians, Pakistanis, all the subgroups involved in each of these categories and their diasporas, including the multiple generations who live in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America and South America. I pity the poor American Studies department that must struggle to cover Asian Americans in their diversity as well as all the other groups in America, past and present. Good grief!
Think any of these groups is small enough to ignore? Just ask the CIA operatives who recruited the Hmong from the mountains of Laos to be their guides during the Vietnam War to find Americans shot down over "enemy" lines if they could have done the job without the Hmong warriors.
Want to ignore the Taiwan-China unresolved civil war? Think again. America is bound by law (the Taiwan Relations Act) to intervene militarily if China should try to reunite with Taiwan by force. Yet we are also bound in our relations to Mainland China to recognize only "one China" whose government happens to be the People's Republic.
Want to pretend Asian Americans haven't contributed anything but coolie labor and cheap railroad tracks to the building of the American nation? The multibillion dollar Florida citrus industry was made possible because a Chinese transnational in the Sunshine State created the first frost-resistant orange at the turn of the 20th Century. His name was Liu Jin-Guang. Filipino soldiers fought alongside Americans in World War II during the brutal Pacific campaign; they too are part of the so-called Greatest Generation. And remember the prosperity of the dot-com era of the late '90s? Currently, two-thirds of all Silicon Valley software companies are owned either by Chinese (from the Mainland or Taiwan) or South Asian Indians. These are but a few examples of how Asian Americans have contributed to the creation of America.
Let's start thinking seriously about the need for an Asian American Studies department. And let's not forget that although we are currently living in a state that borders the Atlantic Ocean, the United States is a Pacific Rim nation, too.
May-lee Chai is the Visiting Writer in the Creative Writing Program.
She can be reached at mchai@amherst.edu