By Emil Guillermo
May Day! May Day! Are you ready for Lost Sock Memorial Day? How about Pack Rat Day? They are among the one-day celebrations embedded in May, but you’ve got all 31 days for National Salad Month, National Hamburger Month, as well as National Fungal Infection Awareness Month. (Just add mushrooms to the salad and burger).
Oh, and did I mention, May is also Asian Pacific American Heritage Month? Have you hugged all the immigrants at your local ramen joint this morning?
No?
Well, have you greeted your fellow APAs with hearty salutations delivered in different languages just to show off the great ethnic diversity within our big rice bowl of a community?
No?
Celebratory chest bump, anyone?
For many years I’ve remarked how during May, while on my normal social rounds, I never hear as much as a peep from anyone about Heritage month. It’s always some forced official celebration at some government building in a place with white shirts, gray suits and lots of flags and hula skirts, because nothing says “Asian” like girls in coconut shell bra cups.
Certainly, the month doesn’t prompt any unsolicited Hallmark cards, emails or tweets. Nothing. Now, I know we’re not talking Chanukah, Christmas or even Kwanzaa. But for diversity advocates, this is our time, our month—by law.
The truth is no one these days really cares about Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
That’s why I’ve given up being a mere Heritage Month Scrooge. This time, I’m going a little further.
Abolish the thing already. If no one really cares about it, and no one really celebrates it with zeal, no one will care if we shred all the proclaiming documents with a samurai sword.
Of course, killing the thing will take an act of Congress.
A SHORT HISTORY
It all started in the nation’s capital. According to the Organization of Chinese Americans, Jeanie F. Jew, a board member and a staff person on Capitol Hill, was miffed by the exclusion of Asian Americans in the Bicentennial celebration in 1976. So Jew teamed up with Ruby Moy, a staffer with then-Rep. Frank Horton, and the two of them got the late congressman to push for a week to honor all Asian Americans.
Horton, no dummy, enlisted then-Rep. Norman Mineta, the godfather of Asian American politicos, to co-sponsor a bill declaring the week starting from May 4 as “Pacific/Asian American Heritage Week.”
A week for Asian Pacific Americans would seem to be a slam dunk, right? But it wasn’t.
It took 14 years in all to achieve the thing we proudly view with indifference. Jimmy Carter did pass the first proclamation in 1978. But that was for an “Asian Pacific American Heritage Week.”
Some full course Chinese banquets lasted longer.
It took another 12 years to get the votes to turn the week into a month under Bush the First. And then it took another two years to turn the bill into an automatic law that didn’t require a new vote every single year. Finally, in 1992, the law was passed requiring the president to proclaim annually that the United States observed May “with appropriated programs, ceremonies and activities.”
Since 1992, it’s been the law. Have you felt the love?
One time my local public library asked me to display my bolo knife.
But just once.
DEATH TO HERITAGE MONTH?
I say if we’re not into celebrating the damn thing for real, then kill it off.
I don’t mean to disrespect the efforts of those pioneering folks who pushed for the celebratory month. But the month has become a kind of anachronism. Born in a time immediately after the push for affirmative action, the mindset now for diversity has changed. When you have a black President and three Asian American cabinet secretaries, after a generation of awareness/history months and festivals and events, Asian Americans and minorities are far from invisible. The ante’s been raised beyond mere window dressing.
We’ve gone beyond the need for a ceremonial law that mandates a half-hearted national celebration. We no longer need a congressionally legislated egg roll buffet for federal and state offices each year. We need a whole lot more, like assurances that we are included in areas where an Asian face is still a rarity. Or that language access to health care and education is no longer an issue.
APA Heritage Month? At this point, who needs it? Press the government for real inclusion and meaningful legislation. Want a sense of history? Put a copy of Ron Takaki’s book next to your bed and read a section of it every night instead. That should help keep the dream alive. But May? Did I mention it’s National Salad Month?
