Interviewer: So could you just start out by telling us your name and a little bit about yourself?
Kiang: Yeah, my name is Peter Kiang, K I A N G, in Chinese my name is, in Mandarin, 念祖, or in Cantonese,念祖. The name is (pause) it’s a nice name in Chinese, it means “remember” or “respect your ancestors” so there’s an intention that’s invested in my name since my birth. I’m mixed-race, multiracial, born in Boston, my Dad is an immigrant from China, my Mom is third generation Scottish American, so giving me my name there was a commitment that I’ve tried to live up to. I’m kind of one of the early generation mixed race kids in Boston.
Interviewer: What organizations are you a part of and why?
Kiang: So I was the first paid staff of the Asian American resource workshop back in 1980 to around 1986, I helped to found the Massachusetts Asian American Educators Association, also the Coalition for Asian Pacific American Youth, and then what I’m probably most known for though is, the last thirty years I’ve been teaching Asian American Studies at UMass Boston, so the Asian American studies program is organizationally the unit that I’m most recognized for.
Interviewer: Can you share with us a story of just like when you decided to pursue these organizations or what you wanted to do for your career?
Kiang: Yeah, a story from the early days was… nationally a lot of people would be familiar with the brutal murder and legal fiasco of the death of Vincent Chin in Detroit. This happened in 1982, he was killed by an unemployed auto worker who blamed him, as a Japanese, for the recession and the decline of the auto industry in Detroit. He was Chinese American, it was shortly before his wedding, it was just a tragic and racist violent case, so in ’82 that took place, and then when the case went to court, the two assailants or killers were found guilty of manslaughter and fined $3000, but they didn’t do any jail time, so it was really the legal case that was an outrage. So in Boston, during the summer of 1983, shortly after the case was being initially protested and we were preparing our own kind of local support for the protest, a Vietnamese refugee named Anh Mai in July 1983, he was murdered by a white marine on leave in front of his house in Dorchester, and three of his housemates were also wounded in that attack. So the idea of racist violence and death and Asian life being cheap, these were all pretty important organizing themes that just outraged so many people. I was very much involved in those early protests
Interviewer: Has there been any recent cases or killings that haven’t been brought to light really?
Kiang: Let’s not do that, if that’s okay.
Interviewer: What gains have Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders had in the past decade, and have you or your organization contributed to any of those?
Kiang: In the last decade, so that’s 2007-2008 to now, I think the most important accomplishment or achievement that I want to highlight is the recognition of higher ed institutions, so colleges and universities, that are Asian American, Native American, Pacific Islander-serving. So the US Department of Education recognizes minority-serving institutions, historically black colleges, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribal colleges, and in 2007/2008, for the first time, a new category of Asian American/Native American/Pacific Islander-serving institutions was finally recognized by the US Government, and that was the result of a lot of advocacy for over a dozen years before then, but once the category of institution was approved, then that meant that underserved and financially needy Asian American or Pacific Islander students had new sources of support and advocacy. So UMass Boston where I work is the only research university in New England that has that ANAPC status. Forty percent of all Asian Americans in higher ed attend these kinds of institutions, so it’s not the elite private school stereotype of Asian American college students, it’s really the public community colleges and urban universities like UMass Boston, so just having that federal recognition was an enormous step in terms of recognizing the needs of the population in higher education
Interviewer: What are some obstacles that they continue to face here in the US?
Kiang: I mean, it’s a long list of obstacles and barriers, so it’s a complicated population with the various ethnicities, cultures, and generations, so I think the second/third generation are really struggling with how you make sense of a black-white racial reality in the United States, especially in the Northeast and Boston specifically, the black-white analysis of race is really deep, and Asian Americans grow up here, who were born here, they face a lot of racial harassment and bullying when they’re kids and that really affects them. So I think that’s one side of it. I think the immigrant and refugee generation has a different kind of struggle for access to services for support with language, culture, discrimination in the workplace, things like that. And then between the two there’s a big gap so I think a big issue is internally within families and communities, how do you bridge, and understanding and real communication that’s bilingual and bicultural between the parent or grandparent generation and the generation that grows up here, so it’s pretty complicated.
Interviewer: Do you have any idea what can be done to remedy those issues?
Kiang: Yeah I mean the key is, it’s really the lack in K-12 education of any kind of Asian American content in the curriculum, so parents and families really have to rely on themselves for whatever cultural knowledge or Asian American historical grounding they give to their kids, and kids without that really just have stereotypes and racist realities and whatever they can figure out on their own. So for me, the failure of the public schools and really the state-level curriculum standards in history, social studies, language arts, has no content related to Asian American anything. And it’s an enormous gap that could be solved. It’s a policy statement by the Massachusetts Department of Education that there’s nothing important to learn or to teach about Asian Americans and it should not be that way.
Interviewer: Thank you so much.
Kiang: A pleasure.
Kiang [to the next interviewer]: I don’t have a good answer to this number 6, to tell you the truth.
Interviewer: Did you have mentor, and if so how helpful was it?
Kiang: Actually I didn’t [laughs]. Sorry to say, I don’t have a good answer to this one. You know, I’m mixed race, and in my generation there were not a lot of mixed race people, so I learned by observing, and I was both cautious and patient in trying to figure out what are my surroundings, and who’s going to understand what my experience is, and how can I relate to people around me, so I became very flexible and adaptable. There was never any one person who played that mentoring role for me, but I learned from a lot of different kinds of people in different settings.
Interviewer: Can you think of a few names of an AAPI background that have significantly contributed to the process? Do you know them or have you heard of them by reputation?
Kiang: Yeah, even in my own program at UMass Boston in Asian American studies, I think the faculty there have made tremendous contributions. Paul Watanabe, Rajini Srikanth, Shirley Tang, Loan Dao, there’s a dozen faculty at UMass Boston affiliated with Asian American Studies who’ve made contributions in terms of political participation, literary voice, media production, and digital storytelling, elder advocacy, community development, community empowerment. So each one of them has their own really inspiring reputation and set of achievements, and I’m lucky because I get to work with them every day. Someone else I’ll mention who has maybe been a little bit forgotten but I do want to pay respect to him is Scott Miyakawa, he created the very first Asian American studies course at UMass Boston in 1973, and he passed away in 1980/81, but he opened up the curriculum at UMass Boston many, many, many, years ago and we’ve been able to establish over 30 courses in Asian American studies now. So you always want to honor and pay respect to the trailblazers, andScott Miyakawa was certainly one of them. I was lucky to have met him a year before he passed away.
Interviewer: How is the current administration affecting your work, and it is impacting you?
Kiang: This is the presidential administration? Well, on a few different levels, the fear and insecurity of a lot of students at UMass Boston who are immigrants or refugees, some of whom are undocumented, many of whom have family members in other countries, so there’s a lot of insecurity and fear that has followed the administration since its initial days taking office in November. Educationally, there’s a lot of uncertainty also about what is going to happen in higher education and in public education, a lot of the policy commitments are different, and what that’s going to mean in the next few years is a big, big question. My school is an urban public university, so any kind of public policy has a big impact on our student body and our institutional underpinnings, so it’s a complicated and very, very uncertain, unstable time. I think there’s no question about that, and we’re still trying to figure it all out. The tensions between various Asian countries, for example, North Korea, China, Pakistan, that raises a lot of questions in terms of immigrant populations who have family members in those countries, also racial hostility against people that come from those countries or that look like people who come from these countries, so on the Asian American side of things specifically, I think there’s also a lot of instability and insecurity.
Interviewer: In what way are you involved in the advancement of Asian American studies?
Kiang: Yeah, I’ve been deeply involved in teaching and advocating for Asian American studies since I was a college student myself in the late 1970s. I’ve taught at UMass Boston for over 30 years now and have been pretty deeply involved in national as well as regional and local work. So it’s, in a way, heartening that we have a strong program, we’ve seen a lot of impact over the years, and at the same time, especially at the K-12 education level, there’s just so little effect that Asian American studies as a field has had on changing what curriculum is available to younger students, and how little even teachers know about Asian American history locally, Asian American population profiles, et cetera, so I think it shouldn’t have to be a student’s college experience that introduces her or him to something significant about Asian American communities or Asian American issues. So I think there’s still a tremendous agenda to pursue but we’ve clearly had impact also, so I’m in it for the long haul and will continue to be.