Hi everyone, Welcome to Asian-American history and identity and anti-racism toolkit. My name is Kariann Akemi Yokota, and I'm an Associate Professor in History at the University of Colorado Denver, where I teach courses in immigration and ethnicity and US history. I received an MA in Asian-American Studies and an MA and PhD in American History. I'm very excited to be one of the co-creators of this course and to be working with you on your journey through the materials. Hello everyone. I'm Maxwell Cassity, I am the other co-creator of this course. I have a PhD in English from Syracuse University and a MA in English from the University of Colorado Boulder, where I've also done a lecture in the English department and I'm so excited to be here with you in this course. This course was sponsored by a grant from Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Kaiser Permanente in partnership with University of Colorado Boulder's Center for the Humanities and the Arts and the ethnic studies department at the University of Colorado Denver. We are so grateful to those sponsors to be able to put this course together and we hope you'll enjoy it. In each week, you'll work at your own pace through readings, videos, podcasts, and other materials that maximum I put together. Will also feature some very interesting interviews with a diverse range of Asian-American scholars in the CU system. We're looking forward to sharing those interviews with you as well. Those interviews are so great. We saw the creation of this course is brought about by the very urgent need to address the rise in anti-Asian hate and violence that has accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic. Seventy three percent rise in anti-Asian hate crimes over the last year, according to the FBI, other data accounting says even higher. Center for the Study of hate and extremism reports a 339 percent increase in hate crimes against Asians and Asian-American over the last few years. This is a really urgent need to understand why that is happening and to intervene into that rise in anti-Asian hate and violence. This course is designed to provide some context and some framework for that rise and also to provide a toolkit for addressing that. This anti-Asian hate and violence didn't start with COVID-19. It's not going to end with COVID-19. We're hoping that this course will give people what they need to go out into the community, whether that's as a learner, as a student, as a teacher in your work or just in your everyday life and to be able to understand what's going on around you, and to be able to intervene into hate and violence when you see it happening in your community. I really liked using the symbol of the toolkit for the course that we put together here because we're thinking about ways in which each one of you can add to your own store of knowledge and to your own toolkits. With each of the materials and resources that we're offering, you can think about how you can use those to address the experiences that you are facing out there in the world or when you see instances of discrimination and anti-Asian violence. We're really thinking about this as an open-ended experience, or like I said before, a journey to self-education and increased awareness. No matter who you are, no matter where you're coming from, whether you are a student who is taking this as part of an ethnic studies curriculum where you are just a learner out there on the Internet. I'm trying to educate yourself about what's going on. Whether you are an advanced student looking to give yourself some resources for your own work, or if you are taking this as part of a professional development, or if you are one of our excellent active bystanders getting trained up on how to work in your community to help people intervene into anti-Asian violence and racist hate crimes in general, this course has something for you. We hope you will work through it at your own pace to find what is going to benefit you and to take it out. I'm not just here in this course, but to take it out with you. The course itself is divided into three weeks based around some pretty broad and general questions. Who are we? We Asian-Americans, how did we get here and where are we going? In each week, you'll have a self-paced setup. We're going to discuss lots of different topics, including different definitions of terms like Asian-American, like API, as well as the histories that make up the Asian-American community in the US and abroad. We're going to talk about some of the key topics to understand in terms of histories of racism in the US, and also some strategies in terms of activism, in terms of engagement. Going forward I really hope that as you're working through the different topics, you take time to pause and do more of a deep dive into the areas that you find especially interesting. We teach at universities. But just to remind you, it's not like a university course where you're going from point A to B. We do have set some goals, learning objectives for each of the sections and we can talk about that, but really encouraging you to stick with it. That's why we wanted it to be a self-paced journey. I think that if you learn about the history of Asian Americans, it will give you a deeper context into the types of challenges we're facing. The things that the Asian-American communities are facing now, the challenges, the problems, it's not new. It's certainly changes in terms of contexts, but there are some similarities, and we feel like learning about past struggles, past movements, and activist efforts to address previous forms of violence. This will help us think about paths forward. Yes, Really important to recognize that it's only a three-week course. We can't cover all of the history of all Asian-Americans in all the time in this course. But we've tried to make the course respond very specifically to the rise in anti-Asian hate and violence accompanying COVID-19. To give as deep and as broad of a course for you as we can within that time frame, we've tried to touch on topics, but there are of course, many topics, many identities that we will only be able to touch on and not go deeply into. We do encourage you, as you go through the course, think about terms you would add to the glossary. Think about things you would like to see added to the course and please respond at the end of the course by adding those things and letting us know and letting your fellow learners know other places to go, other things to see, and important topics to address in addition to this course. We hope this course will be a springboard into further learning about American history, Asian history, and anti-racism. Should we talk about the course layout, Kariann? Yeah, that sounds great. In Week 1, we're really focusing on the history of the different Asian American cultures and identities in the US. We're asking the question, who are we? What groups make up the Asian American community? We all have such different histories, such different paths to get here. We're going to start to talk about that. Also, to start to lay out some definitions as you said. I think that the glossary is really a helpful tool for all of the learners out there and for us to get a sense of the lay of the land. Yeah, the week 1 is really designed to give everybody a foundational base going forward. We're going to really define key terms. What does "Asian-American" mean? It seems like it's self-evident, but actually it's very complicated and complex. There's lots of diverse communities that get wrapped under the umbrella of Asian-American. We'll talk about some of those, including mixed race and queer communities, as well as what is AAPI, what is Asian-American Pacific Islander? There's just a huge diversity of communities that fall under that umbrella. We're going to define those terms. We're also going to work to give you a very basic anti-racism toolkit. We'll talk about what does it mean to be an anti-racist? What is structural racism? What is interpersonal racism? What are the differences between those different terms and how we experience them in our daily lives. Then, after that, week 2, we really start to tighten the lens to talk about historical contexts. As a historian, I think it's really important for everyone out there to think about the past. Like I said, what are the stories to the people? How do we understand the different global trends that brought different groups of Asians to these shores of America? We talk in this section about the laws that were passed by the US government in relation to Asian communities in Asian immigrants will talk about the Chinese Exclusion laws of 1882. Think about the different receptions that Asians and Pacific Islanders received in Angel Island versus their European counterparts in Ellis Island. We've talked about that early history. Again, I wish we could cover everything. But we really start with the late 19th century, and then we move forward into the era of World War II. We use the example of Japanese-American incarceration to talk about the different forms of discrimination that agents have faced in that wartime period. When we talk about what happened to the Japanese, I think it's also important to think about how the war influenced other Asian groups in America. We'll do that. Then we move on into the post 1965 era when we see a large influx of immigrants from Latin America and Asia, and we talk about how, again, legal barriers were set up despite the fact that more Asians are entering the country. Then we move into the late 20th century. We talk about the 9/11 tragedy and how again, that informs how race relations in the United States are structured. We'll move straight into the current problems and the current crisis as we set you up for week 3. Then week 3, that historical basis is so important for getting to the heart of the course, which is addressing COVID-19 and how that has built on that foundation of anti-Asian racism that has been expressed throughout US history. In week 3, we pick up in the COVID-19 context. We'll also discuss how Asians and Asian-Americans have been represented both in popular media and in the law, including stereotypes like the Yellow Peril and the model minority myth and how those have effected how Asians and Asian-Americans are presented in the media. I think that's a really important context for thinking about how COVID-19 has played on augmented those stereotypes. Certainly, the Yellow Peril especially becomes resonant again in COVID-19. It's unfortunate that the hate and violence in the wake of COVID-19 is not unique. In my area of study, I specifically look at representations of disease and how disease has been used to repress and stigmatized minority groups. Asian-Americans have been a major target of that problematic racist discourse. We're going to unpack how that modern context speaks to that history that we're going to allow in week 2. But most importantly, in week 3, we're going to give you an opportunity to develop a toolkit for going outward. Working with our partners at Right To Be with some of their trainings, we're going to talk about what it means to be an active bystander, what it means to take that knowledge and that context you'll have developed in the other weeks of the course and use that as a toolkit for going forward out into your community. Whether that means being more accepting and inclusive of people, or actually being able to intervene and to help when you see someone experiencing racism, whether that's a micro-aggression or a major act of violence. There are different strategies we'll talk about to stay safe, but also to be a member of the community who is going to be part of the solution, not just a passive observer. That sounds like a lofty goal. We hope that you will by the end of this course, feel like you have a new perspective on what it means to be Asian-American. Whether you have the full lived experience of being an Asian-American or whether this is something you're learning for the first time. I was going to talk about my area of study, which is inter-ethnic relations. I'm very interested in seeing how different ethnic groups interact as they are all living and we are all living under structural racism. We do welcome members of all communities here, and we are so glad that you've taken the time to explore regardless of your own identity. Thank you for being here. Also with my students, in the classroom, I always like to ask them to take a journal or keep a journal, talk about even just for themselves, how the readings that they're doing and how the things that they're listening to and watching, and the different ideas that they're absorbing, how it's changing their day-to-day lived experience, and I really would love to challenge all of you learners to do that as well as you read a new piece or think about a different question, how does it change the way you see your everyday life if you go out about your business. I hope that some of the things that we have presented for you and curated here will serve to provide some insight and help you live your lives. Yes. In this course, you will find a plethora of resources. We hope you'll explore them as much as you want and that you'll find lots of different ways to engage with the course, whether that's articles, videos, podcasts, the lovely interviews with our colleagues at CU. You'll see each week, we'll have a different selection for you. You can work through it at your own pace and we hope you enjoy the course. Thank you.
