Years ago at graduate school, a fellow student in the American Seminar class asked, “What is the difference between race and ethnicity?” The professor replied, “Asians usually find it hard to distinguish the two.” The student was from an Asian country and the professor did not elaborate the distinction between the concepts. It is no brainer for Americans to tell the difference; however, for people new to American society who have not lived in a racially conscious and divisive society, it is confusing to refer to a minority people as belonging to both a particular race and to a different ethnicity. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when millions of immigrants came to America in search of better life and supplied American industries with labor, they were labeled white, yellow, brown, or black. This skin-colored definition of people as different races reflected American racial views of people of different cultures. Even in current mainstream discourse, racial and ethnic minorities are still called people of color or colored people, instead of minorities.

Immigrants, meanwhile, tended to define themselves along lines of nationality and common cultural heritage. Not only did people of non-European origins endure pervasive racial discrimination and violence, many European immigrants, who made up 90 percent of immigrants between the 1830s and the 1920s, also faced discrimination and prejudice upon arrival. The Irish, Italians, and many Southern and Eastern European immigrants (mostly Catholics, Jews and others) were treated as inferior to the white Americans—the so-called white native stock—before becoming integrated into the white mainstream. European immigrants, once integrated into this white mainstream, began to discriminate against others in the United States. In examining the changing definition of race and ethnicity of European immigrants, historian Matthew Jacobson argues that race resides in the contingencies of politics and culture and not in nature.Footnote ¹ Historian John Higham points out that nativist thought shifted toward white racial superiority and expanded the notion of racism and exclusiveness in the nineteenth century before it became the most important anti-immigrant ideology in the early twentieth century.Footnote ²

This essay considers issues of race and ethnic identity experienced by immigrants and students who came to the United States from Asia. For Asian Americans, the meaning of race and ethnicity underwent significant transformations from the nineteenth through the twentieth century as perceptions of their cultural values and traits shifted in the United States. Asian Americans suffered racial discrimination and exclusion by US laws, the only ethnic group subject to legal exclusion. In 1870, Congress passed the Naturalization Act barring Asians, mainly Chinese at the time, from becoming US citizens. Denied the right to citizenship, Asian Americans had no voice in the American political system and no way to defend themselves. Citizenship exclusion paved the way for the ultimate exclusion of immigration, as Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. These discriminative laws were applied to the Japanese in 1907, and then to other Asian immigrants with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1917, also called the Asiatic Barred Zone Act.

It is important to note that the exclusion of Asians coincided with the rise of Jim Crow laws in the South, the racialization of American society, and the imperialist thrust of American overseas power. During World War II and the early Cold War, the US government began to make gradual changes in immigration policies by ending the exclusion laws and opening doors of naturalization for Asian Americans, though it continued the restrictive national quota system established in the 1920s to keep Asians out.

The 1960s civil rights movement was a watershed in improving and transforming racial relations in American society. The 1965 immigration laws, which ended the national quota system, along with the various refugee laws, led to a diverse Asian American population. The civil rights movement was also a turning point, with Asian American cultural values becoming recognized and individual self-confidence boosted. The shift for Asian Americans in the past half a century has been enormous, as their identity transformed from one of painful exclusion to recognition of their significant contributions to America's diverse society, despite the fact they continue facing racial discrimination.

The ethnic composition of Asian American population has changed significantly in recent decades. In the 1930s, the major ethnic groups were Japanese and Chinese, with some Koreans, Filipinos, and Indians. Since the 1970s, the Asian American population has become increasingly diverse. In addition to immigrants, many war and political refugees arrived from South Asia and Southeast Asia due to US involvement in the Vietnam War and American overwhelming influence in Asia. In 2000, the Asian American population was about 12 million, including, in descending order of numbers, Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Cambodian, Pakistani, Lao, Hmong, and Thai.Footnote ³

Those Asian peoples have distinct historical and cultural heritages, with different traditions, customs, and foods. They are all, however, grouped together under one term in the United States—Asian American—not because they choose that but because they were given that designation. In their daily lives, they tend to self-identify along their common cultural heritage and national lines, such as Chinese American or Korean American. Ethnic studies sociologist Yen Le Espiritu notes that the term Asian American is an artificial label initially imposed on Asians by non-Asians but adopted by Asian American activists in the 1960s to create community solidarity to fight for civil rights and to rally for political actions.Footnote ⁴ Due to wide diversity among Asian Americans, studies of their experiences in the United States and any generalizations made about them, as historian Eileen Tamura also notes, can only be done with broad strokes.Footnote ⁵ Studies based on specific ethnic groups, as done by many scholars and my discussion here, can demonstrate the case studies of Asian Americans.

The following discussion takes a close look at the experience of Asian students in the larger context of Asian immigrants to analyze how American education has historically shaped the racial and ethnic identity of Asian Americans as a minority group and the cultural meaning of being a member of that minority group during different times. Historian David Tyack comments that Americans have always “attempted to create civic cohesion through education in a socially diverse and contentious democracy.”Footnote ⁶ In his book Seeking Common Ground, Tyack investigates the themes of unity, diversity, and democracy, while taking into account broader social forces, educational ideologies, and the daily lives of individuals that shaped the motives and objectives of these attempts. His studies illuminate that creating a cohesive unity has been the main force in maintaining a national identity in America, even as Americans excluded and segregated various groups of people and denied their integration into American society.

In the context of racial divisions and segregation, American education for unity and democracy was filled with contradictions and controversies along racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural lines. The contradictions of unity and democracy played out acutely in Asian American communities and the daily lives of Asian Americans for over a century, as they were excluded from that national unity and denied citizenship and participation in the democratic political process. Going beyond schooling as education, I will use a broader definition of education that includes community and family as well as public culture and media as educational agencies. Historian Bernard Bailyn, in his examination of education in early American society, included such vital social determinants as family, apprenticeship, and organized religion in the realm of education.Footnote ⁷ Including social determinants in the scope of education is a useful approach. They explain educational experiences from different aspects of society and help us understand how pervasive and powerful those educational settings are in shaping the interpretation and definition, including misinterpretation and stereotyping, of peoples of different cultures in American society. Taking both the societal/external and the individual/internal perspectives in discussing the Asian experience, I analyze the contradictions of unity and democracy, explore their influence in forming the cultural identity of race and ethnicity, and demonstrate the struggle for diversity and equality by racial and ethnic minorities.

The mainstream culture and education categorized non-Europeans as colored and unassimilable races inferior to whites before the civil rights movement.Footnote ⁸ Racial discrimination did not merely result from cultural difference, it was also motivated by economic interests and job competition. Attacks on Asian cultural practices and customs were as much a front to edge them out of jobs as a means to hold them down socially and culturally. Chinese and Japanese (and later all Asians) were marginalized into ethnic enclaves such as Chinatown and Little Tokyo. In California and the West Coast, where almost 80 percent of Asian immigrants lived in the first half of twentieth century, the anti-Asian movement was most prevalent and violent. From the 1890s, the San Francisco Board of Education continuously attempted to segregate Asian American children. They finally succeeded in 1906 when Asian American children in California were required to attend racially segregated schools.Footnote ⁹ However, Asian Americans used legal means to fight racial discrimination from the beginning, as Stephanie Hinnershitz details in her discussion of the divide in American education in this forum.Footnote ¹⁰

In spite of being excluded, segregated, and even denied the right to become American citizens, Asian Americans considered themselves part of America and continued to contribute to the country's industrial growth, working in factories and mines, on farms, and in fisheries. Asian Americans were culture makers as well. For example, Chinese Americans created dynamic cultural life in Chinatown, including theaters, newspapers, schools, stores, and trade. They relied on family networks and neighborhood associations in regulating their daily routines and community affairs.

Asians also used legal means to fight for citizenship by resorting to the 14th Amendment, for instance. Although they sometimes won their cases, they often faced mounting difficulties. In 1923, in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, Indian immigrant Bhagat Singh Thind, challenged the American concept of the white race and the American law that barred Asians from naturalization of citizenship.Footnote ¹¹ Though Thind lost his case, the Supreme Court's interpretation of white on the grounds of “common speech, to be interpreted in accordance with the understanding of the common man,” demonstrated the arbitrary nature of the definition of white.Footnote ¹² Legal scholar Haney Lopez points out the social construction of race in America.Footnote ¹³

Characterizations of nonwhites were filled with attacks on their cultural heritage and insidious judgments about their morals.Footnote ¹⁴ The psychological damages of these attacks often manifested in the minority individuals’ lack of confidence in their own culture and discomfort with their identity. They lived in a world permeated with an idealized white image and everything associated with it, in contrast to the alleged deficiency of a colored minority. In Paramount Pictures’ 1925 silent film Forty Winks, the movie contained a racialized image of Anna, an Asian character played by Chinese actress Anna May Wong.Footnote ¹⁵ One scene in the film displays a magazine with the advertisement, “For the thoroughbred American GIRL—a skin as white as milk! You can have it!” Anna frowns at her colored arm and attempts to “massage out her Oriental lines.” Finally, she reaches for the lotion called Malhofsky's Milk White Magic. She again gazes in the mirror, imitating the “typical American girl” pictured on the magazine.Footnote ¹⁶ Racial whiteness was also sexualized for Anna the young girl, who wanted to be white so that her lover would desire her because of her “whiteness.” The power of whiteness was fully played out in her relations with the movie's other characters to show the “deficiency” of nonwhite girls in terms of popular perception and judgment about their appearance, identity, and worthiness.

American overseas expansion and imperialist thrust in Asia added a new dimension to the contradictions of democracy and progress. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, large numbers of American missionaries went to China, Japan, and the Philippines, along with American merchants and military forces, to evangelize the world.Footnote ¹⁷ American missionaries not only spread the gospel to convert native people, but also promoted the United States as the champion of democracy and the beacon of societal progress. They took on the role of mentoring the local people who were eager for national reform and modernization.Footnote ¹⁸

While missionaries expanded their evangelical enterprise by sending native people to the United States for Christian education, many more native young men and women came to study in the United States with the goal of better serving their countries’ modernization efforts. These students were able to enter the United States during the era of exclusion because American immigration laws exempted students, merchants, and diplomats. Chinese students arrived in the United States with an idealized vision of America as the land of democracy and progress. Some students from Korea and India who were political activists for national independence held similar views of America as well.Footnote ¹⁹

Asian students, mostly from middle-class family backgrounds, were not spared racial discrimination in American schools and society. Moreover, while Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans were treated as yellow people by the American media and public culture, Filipinos were portrayed as brown people. Such racial depictions were popularized at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair (officially called the Louisiana Purchase Exposition), where millions visited “living exhibitions” of native tribal people from the Philippines on display as brown-skinned “savages.” The purpose of such racial presentation tied closely to American “white” colonial rule in the Philippines, where native peoples were treated as racial inferiors incapable of self-rule. One Filipino student studying in the United States to become a Christian educator condemned American racial discrimination. Americans had the “sense of superiority without recognizing the good qualities of other races,” and he warned that “misunderstanding causes prejudice. The average American reads the daily papers about the bad side of an oriental individual, and then he draws a conclusion that all of the Orientals are like that [emphasis in original].”Footnote ²⁰

Chinese students were the largest group of Asians in American universities in the first half of the twentieth century, and they endured the lion's share of American racism. When they arrived in the United States, they wanted to immerse themselves in the educational environment of schools as well as the daily life of American society. They wanted to acquire knowledge of modern technology and the sciences and to learn and practice the political ideas of equality, liberty, and democracy.Footnote ²¹ Their personal experiences in American society, however, shattered their romanticized view of America. They found that they could not rent a room or even have a normal conversation with ordinary Americans simply because they were Chinese. They were denied services at public places such as restaurants, hotels, barbershops, and theaters.Footnote ²² Their experiences of racial hostility and social alienation left them with bitter feelings about this country. Chen Da, later a renowned sociologist in China, found himself openly insulted by racist slurs and denied service at a restaurant when he came to Oregon to study sociology in 1916. He wrote about this humiliating experience in the Chinese Students’ Quarterly under the title “Listen to Me Pouring Forth My Bitterness.”Footnote ²³ Another student, Chen Guangfu, later a successful banker in China, when looking for a place to stay in St. Louis in 1904, was told directly that colored people were not welcome.Footnote ²⁴ Even on American campuses, where foreign students were more accepted, there was no lack of racial discrimination and public humiliation. At the 1924 Colorado College commencement, six male Chinese students were paired together in the degree-receiving procession while the American students were all paired male to female according to the college tradition. The excuse was that no female American student would want to walk with a Chinese student. When prominent Chinese poet Wen Yiduo was in his second year at Colorado College, he left the college in protest.Footnote ²⁵ He described his unhappiness to friends: “The experiences of a sensible Chinese young man in America defy description. Wait till the end of the year after the next, when I come home to spend the New Year with you around the fire. Then I will cry and tell you [about the humiliation I have experienced here] so that to let out my accumulated anger.”Footnote ²⁶

The horrendous racial prejudices against Asian students in the early twentieth century caught American missionary leaders off guard. They became concerned that Asian students’ negative experiences in America might undo the work of missionaries in Asian countries. To address the problem, Christian leaders worked with influential figures such as politician Elihu Root, diplomat John W. Forster, and educator Andrew D. White as well as the Carnegie and the Rockefeller Foundations to collaborate with the YMCA, YWCA, the Cosmopolitan Club, and university professors to help the students adjust to American life—social, religious, industrial, political, and academic. Of the more than seven thousand foreign students in America in the early 1920s, over two thousand were Asian. Americans were encouraged to make friends with Asian students and to say nothing negative about their cultures and peoples.Footnote ²⁷

An organization called the Committee on Friendly Relations among Foreign Students was formed in 1911 to work with Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, and Indian student associations to encourage them to educate Americans about their own cultures and to act as bridges of friendship.Footnote ²⁸ Chinese students created a pamphlet of guidelines for fellow students to adapt to American society that included instructions on etiquette, manners, and fitting in culturally. The pamphlet was later developed into a handbook containing comprehensive information about all aspects of studying and living in the United States. It was so useful that the Institute of International Education adopted it in 1945 and expanded it into its own guidebook, Meet the USA, for all international students.Footnote ²⁹ The handbook included a section on racial discrimination and how to deal with it. It encouraged students to act as cultural bridges to advance racial equality and mutual understanding. The handbook also encouraged students to become good American citizens by attaining the mainstream traits of educated and acculturated persons.Footnote ³⁰

American professors who took an interest in foreign students became a valuable source of support on campus for Asian students.Footnote ³¹ Students showed deep appreciation to faculty who advised them on their academic and social needs. They tended to form strong relations with their professors, whom they would invite to assist in their homelands’ educational reforms.Footnote ³² American professors in those decades, though sincere in helping foreign students fight racial prejudices, rarely condemned American racism in public protests or in their publications. For instance, Paul Monroe at Teachers College, Columbia University, a leading educator of international influence, took a deep interest in Asian students and spent much time helping and guiding them in their academic and social lives. Despite this, he rarely mentioned the negative impact of racism on students in his prolific writings. As a leader in education and historian of American education, Monroe shared the strong belief that a democratic education was a powerful tool for social change and progress. Like his colleagues, he promoted American democratic ideas and institutions and concentrated on the positive side of American society in publications, though he acknowledged problems and deficiencies in the American system. Monroe believed in the “obliteration of racial lines through complete freedom of immigration,” but he did not discuss racial and cultural prejudices or segregation in American society in his writings on American education.Footnote ³³

Asian student organizations played important roles in students’ lives, particularly in creating a sense of group identity and solidarity in addition to mutual assistance and support. The experience of an Indian student, Mohan Singh, was a case in point. Singh attended several colleges in the US, but he found himself the only Indian on campus and living in isolation. He moved from one school to another until he found a group of Indian students at a larger university, where they formed their own student club to help each other.Footnote ³⁴ Student associations encouraged members to actively participate in all aspects of American society, to take responsibility for enlightening Americans about their own countries, and to change Americans’ negative impressions. Students believed that education would overcome American prejudices and make them see the admirable attributes in Asians. Student organizations published newsletters and quarterly journals in which students wrote about their experience in America. Their writings, together with those of Asian Americans in the communities, presented a united voice to counter racial discrimination, cultural prejudices, and the mistreatment of Asians. Their life in America thus transformed them both as students of Western learning and as critics of racial discrimination and social injustices.Footnote ³⁵

After they returned home, Chinese students exerted significant influence in China. A 1934 survey showed that 33 percent of returned Chinese students worked in the field of education, 42 percent in the Nationalist government, and 10 percent in business.Footnote ³⁶ The most symbolic American educational influence in China was perhaps Madam Chiang Kai-shek, whose 1943 speech to Congress appealing for American help in fighting Japanese aggression in China met with a standing ovation.Footnote ³⁷

World War II and the early Cold War were transitional times when American immigration policies began to change. After China became an important ally, Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943, while Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and became a war enemy. In 1952, when the United States was deeply involved in combating communism in Asia during the Korean War, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act (the McCarran–Walter Act) ending the exclusion of all Asians and making them eligible for American citizenship.

Many Chinese and other Asian students became political refugees due to the Cold War. They were allowed to stay and became American citizens, as their academic credentials and talent became an important advantage for the United States. These highly educated professionals subsequently became a significant component of the middle-class Asian American population.Footnote ³⁸ The cultural emphasis on education led to higher graduation rates for Asian students and more professional employment than in prior decades. For their achievements, mainstream America began to label Asian Americans as the “model minority,” although discrimination continued.Footnote ³⁹ Racist speech and violence during the COVID-19 pandemic is another reminder of underlying anti-Asian prejudice still existing in the United States.

The 1960s civil rights movement put pressure on reforming America's discriminatory immigration laws. Demands for social justice and racial equality, as well as the decolonization movement around the world, fundamentally reshaped race relations in the United States and the world. As a result of this “change of wind,” the 1965 immigration laws finally ended the national quota system and opened doors to all immigrants, with a preference for educated professionals. This emphasis contributed to the increase in brain power, including many Asian professionals, into the United States.

As racial relations were being transformed, during the 1970s and 1980s, American society witnessed a new movement toward diversity and multiculturalism, while minority groups continued their struggle for public acceptance of their cultures and full political, legal, and economic rights. At universities and colleges, curriculum changes focused on diversity, and multiculturalism began to introduce new racial and ethnic studies programs.

As minority groups gained recognition and raised their political voices, minority individuals began to develop more confidence and pride in their own cultures and identities. The following reflections of Asian American women whose lives were caught up in this societal transformation, show the process of change and struggle and the transformation of group cultural values and traits in personal lives. Meg, a Japanese American who had trouble understanding her hyphenated identity in the 1960s, sought a therapist to help her understand herself as a marginalized person. The question of ethnicity and identity was important but complicated for her. She felt American, but also Asian, because she observed Japanese customs and carried Japanese cultural values.Footnote ⁴⁰ Claire, a Chinese American, recalled in the 1990s something reminiscent of Anna Wong's movie character in the 1920s: “My sister and I used to fantasize about how our lives would be different if we could wake up one morning with blond hair and blue eyes. We would be popular. Boys would pay attention to us. Girls would not giggle and whisper when we walked into the room. . . . I lived with a sense of despair that things would never change.” She lived in shame of her Chinese cultural characteristics: “My relationship with my mother. My elitist attitudes about education and occupation. My work ethic. My discomfort with promoting myself or my work. My deference to authority. My need to excel. My reserve. My ability to save money and defer gratification. My self-control and my discomfort with others who do not censor displays of emotion in public.” It was a long process and struggle for her to become more comfortable and to come to terms with who she was and being different. Claire eventually gained more confidence in herself and concluded that “some of my self-esteem derives from being set apart from the crowd.”Footnote ⁴¹ Kathy, a Korean American, was more confident and saw Korean ethnicity as very much a part of her identity. The dilemma for her was how to keep her cultural heritage alive through the generations.Footnote ⁴²