In the last year alone, there has been a 339% increase in anti-AAPI hate crimes nationwide. In fact, it was a year ago this week that eight people were killed in the Atlanta metro area — including six women of Asian descent who were gunned down in the spas where they worked.
Education is our best tool and strategy, which is why we have both recently signed legislation requiring AAPI history be taught in our state’s public schools. The Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History (TEAACH) Act made Illinois the first state in the nation to fulfill this mandate and the AAPI Curriculum Bill made New Jersey the second.
AAPI history is rarely taught in our public schools, and when it is, the curriculum often focuses on a limited and narrow set of vignettes like Chinese immigrants constructing the Transcontinental Railroad. Various studies have found that most American history lessons and textbooks fail to illuminate the diversity of AAPI experiences and identities — often reinforcing the perception of AAPIs as foreigners or outsiders, and suggesting AAPI history is somehow distinct and separate from American history.
This is a disservice to our young people. AAPI history is American history. Without proper representation in the curriculum they’re taught, AAPI students are made to feel unseen and undervalued in their own country, while students from other racial backgrounds are not adequately exposed to the diversity of the AAPI community and its long history in America.
These educational shortcomings allow harmful stereotypes about AAPIs to proliferate and drive anti-AAPI sentiment. According to national data from Stop AAPI Hate, hateful, anti-immigrant language has been at the core of nearly half of all reported anti-AAPI incidents from the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 through last June.
No matter the challenges, our education system can and must curb these drivers of hate. Instead of remaining complacent or even making the problem worse — as some states are doing by trying to ban books about critical parts of our history — we need to enrich our classrooms by providing young people with a more expansive view of what it means to be an Asian American Pacific Islander.
Our state legislators ushered in these historic pieces of legislation with the help of partners like Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago, Asian American Caucus, Make Us Visible NJ, and broad coalitions of advocates in Illinois and New Jersey who are leading the charge to better empower and protect AAPI communities. We look forward to putting our curriculum laws into effect this upcoming school year, but there is still more work to be done.
Change needs to happen at scale so that throughout our nation’s education system the stories of AAPIs are told accurately and comprehensively. Initiatives like The Asian American Education Project (AAEdu) — which provides K-12 curriculum lessons on AAPI history for teachers and school districts nationwide — are helping make this happen. As is the influx of resources for AAPI issues that the Asian American Foundation (TAAF) is trying to channel into expanding the teaching of AAPI history. In addition, a number of states, including California, New York, Florida and Connecticut, are pushing to codify AAPI-inclusive curriculum in their school districts.
We are calling on leaders from coast to coast to follow suit and adopt similar policies.
Education is one of the most powerful antidotes we have for combating hate, and those of us who have the power to invest in it must do so swiftly. This is our chance to stop hate now and to help build more inclusive and compassionate communities for the generations to come.
