Uplifting the First Unrecognized Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month
May 14, 2025 

As a first-generation South Asian 'American', still unraveling the threads of my social conditioning, I've become increasingly in touch with the different dimensions of my identity.

My mom raised me as a traditional Indian boy, making sure I knew various Sanskrit mantras, observed auspicious holidays, and understood the general tenets and mythology of Hinduism. At the same time, I was always acutely aware-even if subconsciously-of the African roots of my Dravidean heritage.

 Popular academia proclaims the origins of the Dravidean people as one of its prevailing mysteries, but one look at my mom's family will tell you that we come from East Africa.

On the flipside, my father's family, who journeyed from the northwest Indian state of Gujarat to the southern state of Karnataka, has Northwest African features. 

As if born to balance the legacy of violence that propagates much of modern world history, I remember constructing guns out of wooden blocks in my Catholic preschool and drawing ninjas in kindergarten-no wonder I got instantly hype when my older cousin put me on to Wu-Tang Clan back in 1993.

Coming up in a mixed public school system with predominantly white teachers and administrators, I got assigned to English as a Second Language (ESL) from first to fifth grade. My classmates in ESL were a Black American girl, a Ukranian immigrant girl, and a couple other kids who also spoke perfect English in their own accents.

Despite structural racism and shady neighbors, my upbringing allowed me to live free from the prejudices instilled into American life.

On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump executed day one orders to end federal recognition of May as Asian-Pacific American (AAPI) Heritage Month and dismantle the White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.

While Asian-American social movements started in the 1960's with student organizing in California, President Barack Obama established Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in 2016. 

Although early access to the internet allowed me to connect with fellow AAPIs online, my deeper involvement began in college through the Asian American Cultural Center at the University of Connecticut. Years after graduation, my first professional role at the Asian Pacific American Affairs Commission (APAAC) of the Connecticut General Assembly allowed me to further appreciate the diversity within the AAPI community. I grew close with with Khmer, Lao, and Vietnamese folks who arrived as refugees from war. While I learned culture and immersed in community, I also understood the state's conscious neglect of peoples with less political power. 

Although census data shows the 'Asian' population group as having higher educational attainment and average annual income than Black, Brown, and even White populations, these figures primarily result from an influx of highly educated Indian and Chinese professionals immigrating to the United States in the 1960's. This wave of high-achieving immigrants from developing nations enabled the government and corporate media partners to manufacture the 'model minority myth', which disingenuously uplifts Asian immigrants as models for success, erases AAPI socioeconomic disparities, and instigates tension between AAPI and other minority groups.

Racist home and business lending practices of this era deepened ethnic and economic divides. Some of the most crucial moments in American history-from Japanese internment, the L.A. riots, neighborhood strife in New York City during the 1990's, to targeted violence against Asians during COVID-19-flow from our government's perverse social experimentation.

Through lessons learned from tragedy and turbulence, AAPI, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities have discovered different ways to demonstrate solidarity and show up for one another.

AAPI student activism remains a strong presence in movements to Free Palestine and end all wars.

The worldwide dominance of  hip-hop, simultaneously a Black American and universal culture with ties to Asian tradition, also serves to heal broken bonds.

Eliminating AAPI Heritage Month on day one may seem like political theater from an intrepidly ignorant president, but it also evidences this administration's objective to manifest the design for occupying Western lands. Since inception, this government has aimed to establish a white-dominant projection of the ancient world. They hope to usurp a history of peoples of all shades and shapes who originated from Africa to create culture and explore connections to our planet, our universe, and ourselves.

As history teaches us, the powers that claim to govern the world never stand indefinitely against the progression of people's minds, hearts, and spirits. We're destined to reclaim our birthright as a peaceful and unified people. 

No level of global hegemony or empire will take that away.
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