Asian American Identity – Part II

Yellow Identity



An early effort to develop an Asian American identity and culture was the “Asian American Experience in America – Yellow Identity” conference held on II January 1969 at the University of California, Berkeley. An estimated nine hundred Asian Americans, mainly Chinese and Japanese Americans from the West Coast, participated in this extraordinary event to learn about “Asian American history and destiny, ant the need to express Asian American solidarity in a predominately white society.”

The conference did make Asian Americans realize that it would take more than a single event to achieve ethnic solidarity. Indeed, it eventually took myriad meetings by small groups of Asian Americans across the county to develop a collective consciousness. Without a self-defined identity, they realized, they were vulnerable psychologically and politically. They therefore consciously set out to develop “a new identity by integrating their past experiences with their present conditions” and to raise “group esteem and pride, for it was only through collective action that society’s perception of the Asian-American could be efficiently altered.” Asian Americans soon began to gather together in consciousness-raising groups to address the issue of identity.