Contextualizing Current Events and Asian Pacific American Experiences for A More Inclusive Political Science Curriculum

Abstract

Our current political situation and the demographic realities of our country require Political Science educators to be more intentional about integrating Asian Pacific American (APA) histories and experiences in the Political Science curriculum. By including the multifaceted ways in which APAs have and continue to participate in American civil society and practice citizenship in our democracy, we can help to combat persistent stereotypes and mis/disinformation that have had dangerous consequences for this community throughout American history and in the present moment.

Keywords:

• Asian Pacific Americans
• inclusive pedagogy

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the editors of the special issue, Professors John Ishiyama and James Lai, for considering this article for inclusion in their special issue. The author thanks the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback and concrete suggestions. My deepest gratitude goes to my husband for encouraging me to finish the revision when I felt that the demands of my regular full-time job and a medical emergency with my father would not permit me to finish this article.

Notes

1 In the 2000 U.S. Census, the Federal Government defines “Asian American” to include persons having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent. “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander” includes Native Hawaiian, Samoan, Guamanian or Chamorro, Fijian, Tongan, or Marshallese peoples and encompasses the people within the United States jurisdictions of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. The previous “Asian and Pacific Islander” (API) category was separated into “Asian Americans” and “Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders” (NHOPI).

Historically, Asians and Pacific Islanders were grouped together by government classifications and by us, as part of an intentional community-based strategy to build coalitions with one another. There are conflicting views on the appropriateness of any aggregate classification or reference—“Asian Pacific American”, “Asian American and Pacific Islander”, etc; and a lot of significance can get attached to them, e.g., the word “Other” in “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander” (NHOPI), and it is at times dropped in favor of “Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander”. Whilst our communities use various names to describe themselves; these groupings are ultimately political and part of a dynamic, continuing process of self-determination and self-identification.

We use the term “Asian and Pacific Islander” to include all people of Asian, Asian American or Pacific Islander ancestry who trace their origins to the countries, states, jurisdictions and/or the diasporic communities of these geographic regions (https://www.api-gbv.org/resources/census-data-api-identities/).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Linda Hasunuma

Linda Hasunuma received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is an Asst. Director at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and an adjunct in the Dept. of Political Science at Temple University.