On the inspiring
life that has pushed way past racial binaries and categorizations.
Scholars and
activists associated with ethnic American communities and identities—Asian,
Hispanic, Native, and others—have long critiqued our national
tendency to treat race as a binary, to focus solely (or at least centrally)
on the (already complex and unstable) categories of black and white. The same could
be said of our dominant narratives of the Civil Rights Movement, which similarly
focus largely (if not exclusively) on those racial categories, and ignore the
era’s concurrent movements for Chicano, Asian, and American
Indian equality, among others. What’s more, even if we recognize those multiple
communities and movements, it’s far too easy to treat them as separate and
distinct, rather than to engage with the ways, issuse, and moments through which
they intersect and intertwine and become inseparable parts of American
communities and histories.
One American
whose amazing life and work force us to push beyond those concepts is Yuri
Kochiyama. Kochiyama’s life certainly highlights the evolving histories of
Asian American identity, community, and civil rights, from her childhood years
in a Japanese
internment camp through her role as a mentor for young Asian American activists
in the 1960s and 70s and up to her central role in advocating for the Civil Liberties Act
of 1988, which awarded $20,000 to each internment survivor. But Kochiyama’s
activism (which continues
to this day) has crossed well beyond one race, culture, or community: in
1977, for example, she joined
a group of Puerto Rican activists in their takeover of
the Statue of Liberty in support of Puerto Rican independence; and, most
famously and compellingly, in the early 1960s she became friends with Malcolm X
(with whom she shared a birthday),
joined his Organization of
Afro-American Unity, and was present
at his Febraury 1965 assassination, holding his body in her arms as he
died.
Given that (as I’ve
argued all week) we don’t remember the Civil Rights Movement nearly as fully or
with as much complexity as we should, it might seem crazy to argue that we
should also be trying to push our narratives past the central focal points of
that movement. But the truth, as I see it, is that those two efforts—remembering
the movement more accurately, and pushing beyond it—go hand in hand. As Yuri
Kochiyama illustrates, better remembering a single Japanese American life means
also better remembering the dark histories of the internment camps, the burgeoning
Asian rights movement, forgotten Puerto Rican activists, and Malcolm X’s evolving
and tragically unfinished final years and work, among many other things.
Similarly, the Civil Rights Movement, while hugely significant and inspiring on
its own terms, also connects to numerous other American histories and stories,
communities and identities, tragedies and activisms. I say we go ahead and
remember it all!
Crowd-sourced
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. So what do you
think? Responses to any of the week’s posts? Other Civil Rights histories or
stories you’d highlight?
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