The Chinese Freedom Schools: Historicizing and Intersecting 'Lau' with 'Brown'
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| Title: | The Chinese Freedom Schools: Historicizing and Intersecting 'Lau' with 'Brown' |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Trish Morita-Mullaney (ORCID |
| Source: | Language Policy. 2024 23(4):365-391. |
| Availability: | Springer. Available from: Springer Nature. One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-460-1700; e-mail: customerservice@springernature.com; Web site: https://link.springer.com/ |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 27 |
| Publication Date: | 2024 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Research |
| Descriptors: | Chinese Americans, Neighborhoods, Racial Integration, Busing, Educational History, Schools, Public Schools, Activism, Racism, Housing, Voting, Access to Education, Employment, Racial Discrimination, Language Attitudes, Asian Americans, News Reporting, Educational Policy, Self Concept, African Americans, Language of Instruction, English (Second Language), Chinese, Sino Tibetan Languages, Whites, Criticism, Court Litigation, Federal Legislation, Civil Rights |
| Geographic Terms: | California (San Francisco) |
| Laws, Policies and Program Identifiers: | Lau v Nichols |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s10993-024-09709-3 |
| ISSN: | 1568-4555 1573-1863 |
| Abstract: | The Chinese of Chinatown, San Francisco largely opposed the city-wide racial integration plan that would bus their children across the city beginning in 1971. Claiming that it was a violation of their language rights, a need for cultural preservation and continued autonomy from the San Francisco that had long excluded them, Chinatown instituted its own school system called the Chinese Freedom Schools. With this boycott of the public schools, the Chinese were constituted as oppositional to the aims of racial integration, searing constructions of them as being pro-White, anti-Black, and separatist. Yet, such a simplistic and binary argument omits the long history of exclusion including employment, schooling, housing, and voting discrimination as evidenced by the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1965), the only law to exclude a specifically named ethnolinguistic group. To historicize and understand the Chinese Freedom Schools, I analyze this phenomenon using a racial matrix where Asians have long occupied a liminal, in-between space as perpetually foreign, unassimilable, and as a suspect class. Drawing from the theories and concepts of LangCrit, raciolinguistic ideologies and Asian American studies, I examine how agents, institutions, the press, and policies imposed, assumed, or negotiated specific identities of the Chinese during the development, implementation, and dissolution of the Chinese Freedom Schools. I analyze how the Chinese were constructed as uncooperative, creating a competitive cleavage among Asians and Blacks, while dismissing the centrality of White families who largely moved out of the system, avoiding critique. Implications for language-in-education policy are proposed for Lau's 50th anniversary. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Entry Date: | 2024 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1452257 |
| Database: | ERIC |
| Abstract: | The Chinese of Chinatown, San Francisco largely opposed the city-wide racial integration plan that would bus their children across the city beginning in 1971. Claiming that it was a violation of their language rights, a need for cultural preservation and continued autonomy from the San Francisco that had long excluded them, Chinatown instituted its own school system called the Chinese Freedom Schools. With this boycott of the public schools, the Chinese were constituted as oppositional to the aims of racial integration, searing constructions of them as being pro-White, anti-Black, and separatist. Yet, such a simplistic and binary argument omits the long history of exclusion including employment, schooling, housing, and voting discrimination as evidenced by the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1965), the only law to exclude a specifically named ethnolinguistic group. To historicize and understand the Chinese Freedom Schools, I analyze this phenomenon using a racial matrix where Asians have long occupied a liminal, in-between space as perpetually foreign, unassimilable, and as a suspect class. Drawing from the theories and concepts of LangCrit, raciolinguistic ideologies and Asian American studies, I examine how agents, institutions, the press, and policies imposed, assumed, or negotiated specific identities of the Chinese during the development, implementation, and dissolution of the Chinese Freedom Schools. I analyze how the Chinese were constructed as uncooperative, creating a competitive cleavage among Asians and Blacks, while dismissing the centrality of White families who largely moved out of the system, avoiding critique. Implications for language-in-education policy are proposed for Lau's 50th anniversary. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1568-4555 1573-1863 |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s10993-024-09709-3 |
