AANHPI Heritage Month: Overcoming the "perpetual foreigner" trope

Illustrated by Gemini

American history textbooks typically reduce the AANHPI experience to two brief moments: Chinese railroad labor and Japanese American  incarceration during WWII. By skipping over the figures who fought for birthright citizenship, labor rights, and scientific breakthroughs, these books maintain a limited "foreigner" narrative rather than an American one.

According to the latest STAATUS Index from The Asian American Foundation, the American collective memory regarding AAPI history is basically a blank page. The numbers are jarring: over half of U.S. adults — 53%, to be exact—couldn't name a single historical event or policy involving Asian Americans. Not one.

We’re living in a "paradox of visibility." We see AAPI faces in our media and eat the food, but the historical backbone of that community remains invisible to the mainstream. When people could actually name something, they almost exclusively pointed to the Japanese American incarceration during WWII. Beyond that? Crickets.

As the administration pushes for a "patriotic" narrative that filters out "divisive" topics, these figures are the first to be cut. Excluding them isn't just about missing names; it’s about erasing the 150-year struggle for civil rights and legal belonging that defines the AANHPI experience.

Here are some of the AANHPI figures—including the often-ignored heroes of education—who are missing from your average U.S. textbook:

The pioneers of belonging

• Mary Tape: Decades before Brown v. Board of Education, Mary Tape fought for her daughter’s right to attend public school in 1884. Her landmark case, Tape v. Hurley, forced the city to provide an education for Chinese children, laying the early groundwork for the desegregation of American schools.
• Wong Kim Ark: A San Francisco cook whose 1898 Supreme Court victory ensured that birthright citizenship applies to everyone born on U.S. soil. Without him, the legal status of millions of Americans would be in question today.
• Patsy Takemoto Mink: The first woman of color in Congress and the powerhouse behind Title IX. Every girl playing school sports today owes a debt to this Japanese American leader from Hawaiʻi who demanded equal opportunity in education.

Leaders of the movement

• Larry Itliong & Philip Vera Cruz: These Filipino labor organizers were the spark for the 1965 Delano Grape Strike. They reached across racial lines to join forces with Cesar Chavez, proving that the American labor movement has always been a multi-ethnic fight.
• Queen Liliʻuokalani: The last monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, whose autobiography documents the illegal 1893 overthrow and subsequent U.S. annexation, providing a critical perspective on American expansionism.
• Yuri Kochiyama & Grace Lee Boggs: Two activists who showed that Asian American history is inseparable from the Black Power and Civil Rights movements. Kochiyama’s life, from WWII incarceration camps to being by Malcolm X’s side, is a masterclass in intersectional justice.
• Mabel Ping-Hua Lee: A brilliant suffragette who fought for American women’s right to vote in 1912, even though she herself was barred from voting by the racist Chinese Exclusion Act.

View from the edge

When current policies label these stories as "ideological," they aren't just cutting facts; they are cutting the roots of our belonging. Figures like Mary Tape didn't "divide" the country—they challenged it to be more inclusive. Removing them from the curriculum leaves us with a hollowed-out history that treats 24 million AANHPI Americans as guests rather than stakeholders.

The push to "restore truth" to the American narrative is a direct hit on the pioneers who forced this country to live up to its own ideals. As we mark AANHPI Heritage Month, we’re reminded that the purpose of ethnic studies isn't to divide—it’s to tell the whole story of how the United States became what it is today. By scrubbing content that Trump's people see as "divisive," the administration risks erasing the very people who fought for the rights we now take for granted.

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