In November 2008, Floridians who went to the polls to cast their ballots for the next president of the United States also had the chance to reverse eighty years of institutionalized discrimination against Asian Americans in their state. Asian American rights groups in Florida and nationwide distributed pamphlets, sent emails, and spoke to media outlets to build support for a ballot initiative that proposed removing the “aliens ineligible for citizenship” clause from the state constitution. There was hope that Florida could go the way of states like Kansas and New Mexico and formally remove the lingering anti-Asian language. Although the U.S. Supreme Court rendered legislative measures to prevent aliens ineligible for citizenship from owning land unconstitutional in 1952, the connection between the continued presence of this outdated language in the constitution and the legacy of anti-Asian sentiment was clear—this would be a symbolic victory that would signal a purge of de jure if not de facto prejudice and racism aimed at Asian Americans. Because Florida’s anti-alien legislation was enshrined in the constitution, 60 percent of voters would have to approve the initiative in order to remove the discriminatory language from the first amendment and insert neutral language specifying property rights for all. Surely, in the twenty-first century, Floridians would recognize the outdated and discriminatory portion of their constitution and vote to move the law of their land beyond the limits of the past.1
But on Election Day, 52 percent of Floridians voted “no” on the proposed Amendment 1, choosing to keep the Florida constitution unaltered. Organizations and Asian American and immigrant rights activists were stunned. Why would the majority of Florida voters choose to maintain discriminatory language against Asian Americans, the supposed model minority? Voters had just elected their first African American president, and 50.91 percent of Florida voters cast their ballots for Barack Obama. It appeared as though America was slowly, but perhaps surely, moving toward a more inclusive and representative nation. However, for those who voted against the measure, the decision was straightforward: Illegal immigrants should not be able to own property in Florida. Latino immigrants and Muslims, rather than Asian immigrants, were the feared minority groups because of increased migration from Central and South America and tensions following the September 11 attacks. While some, such as Citizens of Dade United leader Enos Schera, were “1000%” happy that the amendment didn’t pass because “they’re buying up all the land,” others, such as Representative Dennis Ross, believed that the current amendment provided protection against members of the Taliban buying property in Florida and using the state as a base for the next terrorist attack.2 More generally, however, the media reported that most Floridians who voted against the amendment confused “aliens ineligible for citizenship” with “illegal aliens.” The word “alien” triggered images of illegal immigrants, and anyone who entered the country illegally should not be allowed to own property, like American citizens or those who had naturalized or entered legally. Many media outlets criticized Florida voters for their anti-immigrant views, but the story was largely forgotten amidst the electoral triumph of America’s first African American president.
Time and willful ignorance have erased the history of Asian Americans in Florida and the discrimination they faced. The legacy of racism and discrimination against Asian Americans in the South has been subsumed by a larger, black-and-white narrative of racial injustice in the United States. The struggles of Gong Lum, Lum Jung Luke, the unjustly imprisoned Japanese Americans in Arkansas during World War II, the Vietnamese refugees, Han Say Naim, Fortunatio Annunciatio, and the founders and members of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association are not part of the historical memory or are only footnotes in larger studies of civil rights.
The strength of the model minority myth pervades American society and has devastating effects on attempts at political and social change. Average Americans may be familiar with the history of Chinese railroad workers or Japanese American incarceration during the 1940s, but their understanding of Asian American history is shaped more by stereotypes of Asian immigrants. The belief that Asian Americans have worked hard to overcome adversity erases the struggles of the past and creates “two Asian Americas”: those who came before 1965 and those who came after, with the struggles of both groups largely forgotten or ignored.3
The erasure of Asian Americans from southern legal and civil rights history does more than leave a glaring hole in the historiography. If we forget about the presence of Asian Americans in the South and the legal struggles they faced, racism and discrimination appear to be merely cultural and without a past. However, Asian Americans continue to face discrimination, as in 2014 when they experienced difficulties voting in Georgia.4 Cultural and social prejudice also continue to shape receptions of Asian Americans. Betty Brown, a Republican representative from North Texas, casually remarked in 2009 that if Asians wanted to make the voting process easier on themselves, then they should just “adopt a name for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with.”5 While Brown’s solution to the continued discrimination that Asian Americans face inspired chuckles and exasperated eye-rolls from Americans who viewed her comments as just another example of right-wing, southern attitudes toward minorities (Betty Brown “American name generators” are still available online), they are not simply cultural gaffes but indicators of the long struggle of Asian Americans to overcome prejudice and legal inequality. It appears as though Asian Americans have no claims to a history of civil rights and no place in a history of southern racism and discrimination.
Considering the more recent examples of prejudice and lingering discrimination toward Asian Americans, the history of Asian American activism in the South also raises questions of how successful legal change is in terms of ensuring civil rights. In the racial history of the United States, discrimination and prejudice are intricately connected; however, changes in the law mainly address open racism as found in discriminatory actions and deeds and not necessarily prejudicial beliefs or thoughts. As the Indian American hoteliers indicated in their own battles against entrepreneurial discrimination, the law cannot “fix” prejudice. While the Indian American hoteliers were able to achieve a level of success with legislation protecting franchisees and Lum Jung Luke was able to gain property rights by using the courts to fight against anti-alien land laws, legal victories for Asian Americans were in many ways attached to what Derrick Bell Jr. has described as “convergent interests.” Legal victories for African Americans (such as the Brown decision) only occurred when their interests converged with those of whites. For decades, African Americans had battled against school segregation but had little success in destroying the larger system of “separate, but equal.” Once white Americans became concerned for their nation’s image during the Cold War, however, they turned to supporting African Americans in order to preserve liberal ideas of freedom and democracy. Despite the Brown decision, school segregation as well as prejudice in the United States remained, illustrating the limits of legal measures in addressing racism. Asian Americans were required to convince whites that they were not threatening and that they deserved basic rights and protections, all the while remaining, as Lisa Lowe argues, “othered” through their history of immigration and American Orientalism.6 Asian Americans were in difficult situations, as many often appealed to their “otherness” (through race, ethnicity, or immigrant status) to demand rights, but were at the mercy of a court system that allowed whites to either recognize their unique position or not, thereby confirming that Asian Americans were perpetual outsiders. At times white Americans embraced this otherness as favorable (such as during World War II and the postwar years), while in other scenarios they identified it as a hindrance. The experiences of Asian Americans in the courts and in promoting legislation are also examples of the connections between the power of white Americans and civil rights laws that apply to immigrants and noncitizens as well as African Americans.7
The history of Asian American legal activism in the South sheds light on current problems for both racial and ethnic minorities in this region and immigrants more generally. With the recent string of anti-immigrant laws and practices in Alabama, Georgia (where you must show a social security card to obtain water service), and Texas, a deeper understanding of the history of immigrant and Asian activism would tie the past to the present and provide opportunities for thoroughly examining racist and discriminatory rules and regulations. Asian Americans were not always successful in their individual attempts to combat inequality, but when they banded together, as did the Vietnamese refugees and the Indian American hoteliers later in the twentieth century, and joined with other civil rights organizations (such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and business organizations), they actively participated in the process of pushing the South away from legalized discrimination. However, their experiences also remind us of the limits of the law in addressing a legacy of segregation, racism, prejudice, and discrimination that affected all minorities and created different shades of justice in the South.