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Week 12 · Readings & resources

Week 12 — Readings & Resources

Introduction to Ethnic Studies Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 12 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 42–53 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (16–20 min total)

① What the 1965 law changed

Chapter 12, Section “Read the 1965 law: the door reopens one family at a time” · Session 1, Segment 1, “The 1965 law and E3” · Remember: the 1965 law ended the national-origins quotas and favored family ties and skills, for immigrants from many parts of the world.

  • How the 1965 Immigration Act Transformed America — Henry Louis Gates, Jr. — a short documentary clip that sets the 1965 law beside the Voting Rights Act signed the same year, explains that the new rules admitted people for their skills and their close relatives here, and notes that the law's framers expected little change and turned out to be wrong. This builds on Week 11's work with the 1924 act and the quota system it built. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)
  • Hart-Celler Act — Immigration History — a historians' society's summary of the 1965 law: the end of the 1924 quotas, the family and employment preferences, and the historians' point that the law opened doors from Asia while placing the first numeric caps on immigration from the Americas. Stop here before the 1986 law and the history of who could become a citizen; next week takes that up. (reading, 5–8 min)

② Who named Asian America, and why

Chapter 12, Section “Name the Asian American movement: many communities, one chosen name” · Session 1, Segment 2, “The Asian American movement” · Remember: students coined Asian American in 1968 to join communities with different histories, not to erase their differences.

  • Asian Americans: ‘I Was Trying to Figure Out Who I Was’ — WETA National Productions — a documentary clip about students at San Francisco State in 1968, where the demand for Black studies led Chinese American and Filipino American students to ask for courses about their own histories; listen for one student's realization that classmates who were not Chinese shared similar experiences. Use it while completing the Week-12 module overview. (video, 3 min) (captions: creator)
  • Yuji Ichioka — Densho Encyclopedia — a short encyclopedia entry on one of the founders of the Asian American Political Alliance, widely credited with coining the term, and on his later work as a historian of Japanese immigrants; read the opening paragraphs on the Alliance and skim the rest. (reading, 3–5 min)

③ Examining the model-minority image

Chapter 12, Section “Examine the model-minority image: a stereotype, not a description” · Session 1, Segment 3, “The model-minority image” · Remember: the image flattens many communities into one, hides poverty and discrimination within them, and is used to blame other groups.

  • Model Minority — Densho Encyclopedia — an encyclopedia entry that traces the image from the wartime years to Petersen's 1966 article and shows how Japanese Americans themselves answered it, some welcoming the praise and others calling it a myth; read the sections on the 1960s and on the Japanese American response. (reading, 8–12 min)
  • The "Model Minority" Myth — Densho — a two-minute oral-history clip in which a Japanese American community organizer explains how the image is used to criticize other groups and how it ignores the history of racism; notice that he opens with his own strong claim about who promotes the image and why, a claim about motives that goes beyond the chapter's three-part critique, so weigh it as one organizer's view and compare it with that critique. (video, 2 min) (captions: creator)

④ Refuge and annexation: two different roads

Chapter 12, Section “Read refugee resettlement and E5: refuge, not ordinary immigration” · Session 2, Segment 4, “Refugees and E5” · Remember: a refugee flees persecution and is admitted under refugee law, and Native Hawaiians did not immigrate at all; the border moved over them.

  • 1975-1984: Redefining Refugee Resettlement — IINE — a resettlement agency's short history of the years after 1975, when families from Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries arrived in one metropolitan area; it explains the Refugee Act of 1980's well-founded-fear definition and the new Office of Refugee Resettlement. Notice that it gives its own larger count of refugees over a longer span than the chapter's figure for 1975 to 1979. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)
  • Hmong in the Thailand Refugee Camps — Hmongstory40 Project — a former refugee-program official describes Hmong and other Southeast Asian refugees as the first large non-European refugee group the country took in. Listen for his praise that they made the leap and are doing so well, and test it against the chapter's critique of the model-minority image. (video, 2 min) (captions: automatic)
  • How Did the US Annex Hawaii? — Look Back History — an animated history of the Kingdom of Hawaii, the sugar planters' rise, the forced constitution of 1887, the coup of January 1893 backed by U.S. Marines, and annexation in 1898 over Native Hawaiian protest; it closes by noting that Native Hawaiians never consented to annexation. (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

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