Introduction

Dear Reader, thank you for holding this book. The way we hold each other is what grounds me in critical hope in times of crisis and in times of joy. It's 2023, and the Asian American community is facing a rising crisis of hate, racism, and violence stemming from systems of colonialism, exploitation, racial capitalism, xenophobia, sinophobia, white supremacy, and anti‐blackness.

Asian Americans know that this has been happening to us long before the pandemic. In the United States, anti‐Asian sentiment stems from racist and exclusionist policies like the 1790 Naturalization Act that restricted naturalization to only people identifying as “white.” Anti‐Asian sentiment stems from the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which for decades banned Chinese people from entering the United States. This act was extended to people from the Philippines, India, and Japan (indeed, an entire “barred Asiatic zone” was established in 1917), lumping different national‐origin groups into a single racial category, the “Asiatic” (Ngai, 2021). Anti‐Asian sentiment is an American tradition set forth by some of our nation's leaders:

• President Franklin D. Roosevelt with Executive Order 9066 (the internment of Japanese Americans)
• President Lyndon B. Johnson's Hart‐Cellar Act of 1965 (shifting an immigrant quota system to a merit‐based system)
• President Donald J. Trump's Executive Order 13769 in 2017 (also known as the “Muslim Ban”)

Today the number of anti‐Asian hate and violence incidents is reportedly soaring above 11,000, according to the organization Stop AAPI Hate 2022 report, which collected data between March 19, 2020, and March 31, 2022. These statistics don't even consider unreported incidents. Holding this book means you see us, hear us, and empathize with us.

The poem you read on the previous pages emerged from witnessing a wave of Asian American education policy slowly taking root across the United States. Of course I have to pay homage to the 1960's ethnic studies movement that manifested because of the Third World Liberation Front. While ethnic studies is mostly a bicoastal movement, specific Asian American students K–12 mandates began occurring recently, starting in Illinois with the Teach Equitable Asian American Community History Act (TEAACH Act). After the Act passed, many coalitions followed suit in different states, such as the Make Us Visible Connecticut and Make Us Visible New Jersey.

I chose the title Teaching the Invisible Race, because despite the anti–Asian American policies and incidents that I have outlined at large, people still render us invisible through gaslighting our oppression, excluding us from social justice education and conversations, through intentional omission, and homogenizing our vast and diverse experiences.

While my poem at the beginning of the book critiques how teachers as “shepherds” will hold us (teach our stories), this book aims at helping educators understand how to strengthen their own Asian American ethno‐racial literacy in order to teach it to their students. The outcome is culturally responsive and sustaining, paying homage to Dr. Gloria Ladson‐Billings's evolved work in Culturally Responsive‐Sustaining Pedagogy. Teaching the Invisible Race is Halo Halo, “mix‐mix” in Tagalog. When I say Halo Halo, I mean this book is a remix of story, poetry, concepts, theory, framework, case studies, interviews, and more. Beyond the fight of combating anti‐Asian sentiment, violence, and racism within ourselves and within the communities we serve, I'm pushing educators to hold both our fight and our joy together. To hold us close means you hold us beyond this moment and through this next stage of an evergreen movement.

The Term “Pro–Asian American”

CUNY professor Kevin Nadal explains how the terms “Yellow Power” and “Brown Power” stem from the Black Power Movement in the 1960s‐70s. In a similar light, I'm using the contemporary term “pro–Asian American” as an inspiration from the Black community who founded the term “pro‐Black” as a response to Black dehumanization and celebration for Black identity, history, culture, power, and futures.

In searching for the origins of the concept of “pro‐Black,” scholar mentors and friends pointed me to Marcus Garvey, a Black nationalist and pan‐Africanist, who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the 1920s, which stressed Black pride, racial unity of African Americans, and a need to redeem Africa from white rule (Hill, 1983). Others have pointed me to the “Black is Beautiful” movement founded by Kwame Brathwaite and Elombe Brath in the 1960s‐70s, which broadly focused on embracing Black culture and identity, with a sub‐focus on emotional and psychological well‐being (National Museum of African American History & Culture). In a similar light, this book aims at exploring and educating on what it means to be pro–Asian American.

Asian American people have acted pro–Asian American without even labeling their actions as such through the building of Asian American employee resource groups, affinity spaces, businesses, movies, networks, and more. In a similar ethos to pro‐Blackness, “pro–Asian American” balances the concept of combating or fighting anti‐Asian hate and racism, since it is a symptom of white supremacy. “Pro–Asian American” means you are actively supporting the Asian American community with a big focus on low‐income Asian American communities that go invisible due to the model minority myth (i.e., Hmong, Lao, Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, and more). “Pro–Asian American” means you are actively supporting Asian Americans with the notion that our liberation is tied to combating anti‐Blackness and embodying a pro‐Black lens. We owe our freedom to radical Black activists and organizers, many of whom are queer, trans, and non‐binary, who paved the path for us to thrive as a community. I speak more about the history of Black‐and‐Asian American relations later in the book when talking about Isang Bagsak pedagogy and cross‐racial solidarity.

Who Does This Book Center?

This book centers the narratives of Asian Americans: East, South, and Southeast. For clarity, East Asian refers to: mainland China, South Korea, North Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau. South Asia refers to Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka with Afghanistan also often included. Southeast Asia refers to the Philippines, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Brunei, East Timor (or Timor‐Leste), Myanmar, Singapore, and Thailand. This book does not center West Asian Americans, Central Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders because they deserve their own books, and this book will not do these communities justice as it pertains to education. This is not to say that I won't mention narratives or histories from these areas, because I know there are many overlaps around cross‐racial coalitions in the fight for labor rights, in the fight against colonization, and in the fight for visibility in education. There is also overlap when we think about Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month (APIHM) in May.

Who Is the Audience?

Teaching the Invisible Race is geared toward upper elementary through high school English language arts, reading, social studies, and US history practitioners including teachers, instructional coaches, curriculum specialists, and anyone who has a stake in the realm of teaching and learning. This includes school administrators and counselors. This is the area of expertise that I taught and coached while working directly in schools. The examples and reproducibles in this book will reflect these content areas and grade levels. This book is also for those who identify as white, as well as who identify as People of Color (POC).

The Writing Process, Theories, Analysis, and Inquiry

While this is very much a practitioner's book, there are a few qualitative research logics that influenced my writing process, from the book design to the intake of interviews and readings and to the analysis of the content. These logics come from autoethnography, portraiture, narrative inquiry, community‐engaged scholarship, and Asian Crit.

Autoethnography allowed me to share my own story as a Filipino American spoken word artist. Spoken word poetry is a dialectic, and like the best forms of pedagogy, dialogue with self, student, and community is paramount. With the reflection questions placed throughout the book, they ask you to stop and reflect. This methodology influenced the beginning cadence of every chapter with the section entitled “The Personal Is Political.” I also wanted to emphasize the messiness that is being a Filipino American poet who has lived in San Diego, California, Cincinnati, Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana, Boston, Massachusetts, Miami, Florida and now Madison, Wisconsin. Each place and time period influences how I think and write about being Asian American in the United States, which makes for a narrative hyper‐conscious of context.

Portraiture is the methodology that I learned from my former advisor at Harvard Graduate School...