Discrimination persists in many institutional areas. The astute scholar Gary Okihiro sums up the contemporary Asian American situation this way: Whites have “upheld Asians as ‘near-whites’ or ‘whiter than whites’ in the model minority stereotype, and yet Asians have experienced and continue to face white racism ‘like blacks’ in educational and occupational barriers and ceilings and in anti-Asian abuse and physical violence

But except among a few extremists, as a society we reject discrimination on the basis of race as immoral.

Take Japanese Americans, for example. Recent data indicate that Japanese Americans are more likely to hold managerial or professional jobs than their white counterparts, and their unemployment rate is less than that for whites

To modern ears such language mocking and other Asian mocking may seem novel, but it is actually an old part of the white racist framing of Asian Americans. White English speakers on the West Coast developed this mocking in the mid- to late nineteenth century as their way of making fun of the English-Chinese speech of Chinese workers, as well as of racializing them. An early 1900s ragtime song goes, “Ching, Chong, Oh Mister Ching Chong, You are the king of Chinatown. Ching Chong, I love your sing-song.”2

In spring of 2011, a UCLA student, Alexandra Wallace, created an anti-Asian YouTube video titled “Asians in the Library” that went viral.21 In it, Wallace com-plains of “hordes of Asians” at UCLA, of their not having “American” manners, and about their parents for “not teaching their kids to fend for themselves.”

Subtle and blatant stereotyping of Asians and Asian Americans still pre-dominates in many areas of U.S. society. Consider just a few recent examples. In November 2013, comedian and talk show host Jimmy Kimmel aired a skit on his late night show in which he led a roundtable discussion with children. The discussion topic in the roundtable was the U.S. debt to China and the punch line was delivered by one of the children suggesting that we “kill all the Chi-nese.”

I stopped at a McDonald’s in Mississippi and there were two lines, one for whites and the other for blacks, well, “coloreds.” I stood there confused about which line to join. I stood there and decided to go in the colored line because there was nobody in it and I could get my food faster. When I got up to the counter the guy told me “hey you can’t use this line, get in that other line.” The line for whites was long and I had gone about halfway up when this guy says, “Hey, you can’t be in this line, get in the other line.” I just stood there and thought, “Ah, what am I!?”

Much scholarship on Asians in North America has addressed Asian experi-ences with racial hostility and discrimination over a long history of immigration

We encourage our students to relearn an accurate U.S. history—and to recognize that our common bonds may keep us from making the same mistakes of the past. Knowing our racial past is imperative to help us with our racial future

These students have never been taught Asian American history, or been privy to significant events that have shaped these communities in the United States

For centuries, unjust impoverishment of Americans of color has been linked to unjust enrichment of whites, thereby creating a central racial hierarchy and status continuum in which whites are generally the dominant and privileged group

Indeed, the fact that Asian immigrants and their children are heavily pressured to conform to a white-imposed culture, racial frame, and racial hierarchy—and suffer from much racial hostility and discrimination

A Korean American student at a historically white institution, Cho was viewed by outsiders as unusually quiet, and although he demonstrated warning signs of mental illness, he was mostly ignored, especially by those with the most authority to take action

Asian American women and their high rates of suicide and depression

ad a terrible, uneasy feeling in my stomach and I picked up the phone to hear panic in the voice on the other end of the line. “She jumped out the window. Farrah* jumped out of the window.”

While her mother lay dead on the floor, she covered her and called the police, confessing her crime. This school valedictorian was an accomplished musician who had begun her education at a prestigious Ivy League school and graduated with honors from her southern university. Her crime received little local notice. Only one full-length newspaper article was published, and after her indictment she was barely mentioned. This tragic incident hit home for the first author because she is acquainted with the family, which was one of the few Chinese families in her hometown