RIOT IN THE SKY

My commissioners for the Oberlin Project insisted I have complete creative freedom leaving me with only one prompt, “What comes to mind when you think about Asian American activism?”  This is the question that’s been running around and around in my mind all week through my brainstorm process.  The most prominent icons of Asian American activists pop up: Yuri Kochiyama and Ronald Takaki, and maybe Richard Aoki. But damn, what else? Who else? I didn’t want to just throw up the obvious.  At the same time, I didn’t want to ignore these figures just because it was “obvious” to me.  Many people today have yet to learn about the revolutionary work Kochiyama and Takaki accomplished in their lives.  A part of me def wanted to commemorate their legacies for future generations.  Project aside, all these thoughts and questions led me to a bigger reflection on the concept of messiahship within the Asian American movement.

Messiah leadership was very present throughout the Civil Rights Movement and Third World Liberation movements (Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Che Guevara and so on).  This was good and bad.  At that time, I believe it was necessary for the people of the oppressed to be able to see a real leader rise up in the true nature of their struggles.  Seeing a figure from the community speak out about resistance was an embodied manifestation of personal struggles and self-reflection.  If we grow up all our lives only seeing and learning about white figureheads, white revolutionaries and white presidents, we associate power with whiteness.  For the people to SEE a member of their community be in a leadership position challenging power, well then you know what they say–”Seeing is believing”.

But the problem with messiah leadership is that if you kill the messiah, you kill the movement.  The CIA knew this and the people witnessed this.  There are many reasons why the Civil Rights Movement and power struggles of the 60s and on fizzled out—one of these is largely due to the fact that major leaders were all assassinated or imprisoned.  That’s not to say movements have completely died out.  Over the decades, communities continue to organize themselves through a more powerful style of “collective leadership”.

This leads me to my reflection on messiahs within the Asian American Movement (1960s and on)—there aren’t any.  There are many reasons for why this is and I won’t try to explain all of them.  One of my theories is that the Asian American community is so disperse across ethnicities, generations and issues that it’s been hard to fight on one front at the same time.  4th generation Japanese and/or Chinese Americans may not face the same language/cultural barriers of recent Southeast Asian refugees or immigrants.  Asian American issues span from WWII Repatriation and Veterans’ Rights (regarding citizenship) to deportation, gang violence and labor (regarding citizenship AND non-citizenship).  I guess you can say the Asian American Movement consists of many movements within one—labor movements, Ethnic Studies movement, student movements, anti-deportation and more.

Another reason why I believe messiahs never rose out of the Asian American Movement is due to cultural reasons.  Asian culture and traditions are rooted in very communal and collective values of sacrifice (the idea of shipping parents off to nursing homes in America is APPALLING!).  From personal experience within the Asian American organizing community, selflessness and humility have been ingrained in me by my mentors and others around me.  EGO KILLS COMMUNITY.  We do the work we do out of passion, not obligation—a value of self-determination common from the Black Panther Party’s Ten Point Platform.  We learn to always put the community first before the self, so there was no need to claim recognition or praise for anything.  All these values have been critical to developing a collective approach to leadership within the Asian American community; but over time, I feel this has created our own layer of invisibility.  Members of other communities will never fully recognize the activism that thrives within the Asian American community; thus, our contributions to social change continue to be overshadowed by gross media representations such as the ever-so-notable Model Minority Myth.  Invisibility also hurts us internally as well—where members and future generations of the Asian American community fail to recognize other forms of positive role models and representations of the self (Tila Tequila CAN NOT be our most notable “role model”).  I believe a balance can be achieved between humility and recognition.  We may not need messiahs, but we definitely need more visible, positive role models.

So what do I do?  Do I paint Yuri Kochiyama and Ronald Takaki or not?  My hesitation comes in the fact that I know there are countless more fighters throughout the struggle and movement whose names and faces we may never recognize, so when I think about “Asian American activism”, I want to highlight this fact; I also want to avoid the pattern of idolizing certain figures into a messiah portrait.  But I don’t want to do these leaders injustice either.  I recognize the value of seeing a face like yours in a position of powerful influence.  Sometimes, because visible Asian American leader figures are so scarce, people are quickly drawn to Kochiyama and Takaki because they are visibly Asian American (and both Japanese American).  It’s like celebrity storm shadow!!  But they don’t necessarily represent all my issues as a Southeast Asian.  Through all of this exploration, I’m beginning to realize that many Asian Americans don’t just see these leaders, but we see ourselves in them.  Back to the drawing board.