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The Invisibility of Asian-American Scholars

By Frank H. Wu | For the Chronicle of Higher Education
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Public intellectuals lead an open life of the mind, commanding a broad audience with a deep understanding of their specialized fields of inquiry. They serve as translators of sorts: writing accessible prose without technical jargon but with a grasp of the latest peer-reviewed literature.

Yet Asian-Americans with such viewpoints are simply missing in the public dialogues of our day. While we can probably all cite at least one or two respected Asian-American scholars, they are hardly household names. No Asian-American professors have intellectual influence that extends far beyond their campuses. No Asian-American television commentator regularly analyses the crises of the day. No Asian-American columnist's nationally syndicated views reach the heartland. No Asian-American activist of any prominence can be relied on to respond to anti-Asian-American bias -- or can count on being offered a forum for doing so. Nor are there periodicals dedicated to Asian-American conversations but possessing crossover appeal -- read by those who do not hold doctorates or who claim other forebears -- like Commentary and Tikkun, or the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Black Issues in Higher Education, and the defunct Emerge.

Public intellectuals have always been marked by notions of racial or ethnic identity, whether they sought to impose restrictions on others or escape from the limits set on them. The gentlemen amateurs like Henry Adams -- who was glorified in his Education, and who dominated high culture in an earlier era -- took for granted that their domain was properly old-stock white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. As they were joined by thinkers of other backgrounds -- with mutual uneasiness -- they usually treated the newcomers' lineage as more than incidental. To them, Freud's psychoanalysis was a "Jewish" science. Consequently, Jewish writers -- from Israel Zangwill and Horace Kallen, in the early part of the 20th century, through Daniel Bell, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Lionel Trilling, and others in that storied group that converged on New York City following World War II -- were compelled to struggle with anti-Semitism, cultural assimilation, or a combination of those forces. Yet they attracted a wide readership among the educated. The American canon needed the fiction of Jewish novelists and the interpretations of Jewish critics for a complete picture of the urban landscape; American newspapers depended on Walter Lippmann to explain political trends. Eventually, Michael Novak single-handedly challenged Protestant and Jewish intellectuals alike with his 1972 book, The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics. His pluralism was capital-c Catholic but not cosmopolitan. He asserted that white ethnics were and should remain culturally and politically distinct; they should not be treated as identical to white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

Most visible today among the recent additions to the pundit lineup are African-American professors. The Harvard brain trust in Afro-American studies -- Henry Louis Gates Jr., William Julius Wilson, and Cornel West (who has since left for Princeton University) -- arrived on the scene soon after the iconoclast Russell Jacoby coined the phrase "public intellectuals" to announce their demise. A younger generation, which boasts Robin D.G. Kelley, a professor of history at New York University, and Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of religious studies at DePaul University, is coming along. The right is ably represented by Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and, until his recent reconsiderations of affirmative action, Glenn Loury, director of Boston University's Institute on Race and Social Division.

They all descend from W.E.B. Du Bois in their research interests. He was the archetypal American public intellectual. His varied projects defined the color line as the problem of the century and thereby gave his "Talented Tenth," the African-American elite, a life's work with the charge of lifting up a race. But his endeavors only partly engaged the mainstream -- thanks to racial segregation, not to mention a bit of the author's own dogmatism. The appearance of the latest black scholars whose inquiries render them "race men" (recognition remains elusive for "race women") has been exuberantly heralded exactly because they defy the vicious libels of mental inferiority.

Hispanic and Latino stars of the chattering class are rarer, but they, too, exist. Among others, Richard Delgado, a law professor at the University of Colorado, is a leader in "critical race theory"; the editor and writer Richard Rodriguez is a respected memoirist; and Linda Chavez has alternated between think tanks and appointed office. Meanwhile, the invisibility of Asian-American scholars is as baffling as it is persistent. We are abundant, and actually overrepresented, as students and faculty members in some disciplines (although woefully underrepresented within higher ranks). Indeed, the dominant image of us is as hypercerebral nerds and geeks. Whether intentionally or negligently, however, we are often excluded from the realm of public experts.

One of the reasons may be the result of unspoken assumptions about our proper place and our relative privilege. Asian-Americans are regarded as intelligent rather than intellectual. According to the model-minority myth, we are supposed to be engineers, scientists, and doctors, but we are reputed to be too polite for the role of advocate or protester.

At the same time, although everyone claims to have no wish to compare suffering in a contest of victims, Asian-Americans are presumed to be unaffected by significant prejudice, or, at worst, deprived to a much lesser degree than African-Americans and Hispanics are. Few reasonable observers would doubt the breadth and depth of the historical oppression of African-American people, even though they may well dispute the lingering effects or appropriate remedies. The same cannot be said about Asian-Americans. It seems almost offensive to raise Asian-American concerns except appended as a matter of last priority.

Consequently, African-American intellectuals who advocate with passion are respected for the commitment they bring to their scholarship. But if Asian-Americans adopted the same attitude, we would look inauthentic, if not faintly ridiculous. We cannot help but be undercut indirectly by our would-be allies in ethnic studies. We are also plagued by the perpetual-foreigner syndrome. Asian-Americans who call ourselves by that name may insist that the United States is our homeland, but in the popular imagination we occupy the position of tourists or invaders. We ultimately belong elsewhere. Even third-generation Californians who happen to have Asian faces lack standing to report our own experiences of race or to question American platitudes on racism. Our acceptance is subject to the heckler's jeer, "If you don't like it here, you can go back where you came from," and the self-appointed host's lament, "Don't you appreciate the advantages you've been given here?"

Ironically, although they are expected to be exotically Oriental, Asian immigrants are precluded from being objective authorities on Asia. Their knowledge of Asia may well derive not from ancestry but study; nonetheless, they are suspected as prospective traitors or self-interested middlemen. No Chinese-American has ever become a "China hand," despite the many who would be eminently qualified. Seeing the racial profiling in the failed prosecution of Wen Ho Lee, the spy who wasn't, Asian-Americans know that merely perceived association with Asia can be career-ending and life-threatening. European émigrés are not similarly dismissed as outsiders. Two key texts in our common culture are by temporary residents. In fact, the authors' very alienage is said to have given them unique insight. Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America has enjoyed a respectful revival. Among his predictions was the warning that black and white would not be able to coexist. Hector Saint John de Crevecoeur's Letters From an American Farmer is quoted by every propagandist for assimilation. He asked, "What then is the American, this new man?" His answer confined the mixing of races to white people, excluding African-American and American Indian people; he was able to conceive of a new world, but he did not envision the possibility of Asian-Americans.

More recently, refugees from Europe enriched colleges across America. They founded major institutions, like the New School for Social Research. People like Hannah Arendt flourished with newfound freedom. Today, American Jews are far less shadowed than they were before by the canard of "dual loyalty" with respect to Israel. They can have many points of view, not just one, on the Middle East. Their arguments with each other matter.

We don't hear such arguments among Asian-Americans -- which may be as much a reason for our problem as a reflection of it. Indeed, we ourselves are also to blame for the dearth of Asian-American public intellectuals. Many of us have internalized Asian values of deference to elders, fidelity to tradition, and avoidance of conflict. We shun civic life as too contentious or not quite respectable. Yet we cannot contribute to meaningful discourse if we wish to avoid controversy. Of course, Asian dissidents overseas, who are public intellectuals in another guise, have sustained a countertradition. But Asian immigrants to our country obviously choose not to pursue that path. Instead, they have embraced the American dream wholeheartedly. Their adaptive strategies make sense for them, but not for their progeny. The parents may measure opportunities in the United States, even discounted by discrimination, as still far better than those in developing nations. Their priorities are securing the future for their children, who, they believe (often with excess confidence), can overcome adversity through education. Those of us who were American-born and raised to avoid the public spotlight, however, make a mistake if we trust that our silence secures our civil rights. Worse, we shirk our civic responsibilities.

Two exceptions worth noting are Francis Fukuyama and Dinesh D'Souza. The former is of Japanese heritage; the latter, Indian origins. While both have to their credit best sellers that require serious attention, neither dissents from prevailing norms and, thus, fulfills the critical function of the public intellectual. To the contrary, Fukuyama celebrates the triumph of Western liberal democracy, and D'Souza is known for his attacks on academic culture and black culture. It would be wrong to impose any ideological test on who constitutes a public intellectual, for members of the species populate the liberal-conservative spectrum and defy the idea of such classification. Still, Fukuyama and D'Souza are unlike their African-American and Jewish counterparts. Even the formerly progressive and now reactionary African-American and Jewish theorists who have mass appeal, no different from those who remained radicals, articulate or at least allude occasionally to their status or others' stereotypes of them. In contrast, it is unclear whether either Fukuyama or D'Souza would consent to being called "Asian-American." They exemplify what they seem to foresee: Asian-Americans essentially vanishing into honorary whiteness.

There is an alternative. If we truly believe that the time has come for our race dialogue to be more than starkly black and white, we must consider the many Asian-American voices and pens. Well beyond racial issues, the infinite range of topics that are worth deliberation by public intellectuals on talk shows and op-ed pages should be examined from diverse perspectives. Imagine, for instance, seeing more Asian faces on the NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, discussing topics like counterterrorism measures. Or more Asian bylines on op-ed articles about issues like welfare reform in The New York Times and other major newspapers.

Asian-Americans cannot wait for an invitation. We must stand up and speak out. We will surprise ourselves as much as we do others.

Frank H. Wu, a law professor at Howard University, is author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White (Basic Books, 2002).