Tag: MLK

Categories
Blog

My Debt to Dr. King

This week Scot Nakagawa wrote a piece on the debt Asian Americans owe to the civil rights movement. Here is an excerpt from Colorlines:

As an Asian-American, I’m often cast as an ally rather than a stakeholder when I show up at Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations. Occasionally, someone will even come right out and thank me for showing up, like I’m doing folk a favor or something. It’s awkward to be treated like I, as a person of color, have no dog in the fight for racial equity. But I get where the notion that Asians aren’t real … Read more “My Debt to Dr. King”

Categories
Blog

Asian American Reflections on Martin Luther King Day

Like many others, my Asian American story begins in war. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, my father was a young man studying in Seoul, and my mother a 13-year-old girl. They both largely insist that they experienced no suffering. Yet a different truth emerges from my mother’s references to using helmets of dead soldiers that littered the ground as cooking vessels, or my father’s stories of being arrested numerous times for his leftist political activity.

It was only in my 30s, when I began interviewing my parents, that I was able to begin piecing together their stories, … Read more “Asian American Reflections on Martin Luther King Day”