Academic Adventure

by John S.W. Park

I teach a class entitled “American Migrations,” and it’s about the Immigration Act of 1965 and the immigration laws and policies since then that have re-shaped American society by race and class over the past four decades. The class draws in part from my own research, but as a survey course, we examine broader themes about American society through the lens of immigration. Over ten weeks, I get to explain why California in 2007 looks so very different from California in 1965—there are many more Asians and Latinos now, and they range from undocumented aliens to highly skilled workers. Many of my students are either immigrants themselves or the American-born sons and daughters of immigrants; immigration law and migration trends have impacted everyone in my classroom, and so the entire quarter is devoted to examining closely why these topics remain so compelling.

This quarter, I had a small honors section of five students, four of whom were freshmen. Now, most honors sections feel like extra work, both for students as well as for professors, and I suppose that’s how this one started, too. We met once a week for an hour, and I discussed how and why I selected the various readings, and how social scientists and legal scholars go about doing their work. What’s it like to be a professor designing a class on immigration? How do other professors interested in this topic collect their data, then analyze and present their findings? And how is academic work different from journalism, commentary, or popular media? The first half of our meetings were about writing dissertations, publishing peer-reviewed articles, and structuring scholarly books—it was about immigration, but it was more about helping my students appreciate life at the University. These were mostly freshmen after all, during their first quarter here, and so the sections were really about acclimating. In time, we got to know each other better, they were a fun group, and I was hoping to do something special with my five students.

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It was their idea to take a field trip. I had been talking about various ethnic neighborhoods in Southern California that were irrevocably transformed after the Immigration Act of 1965—places like Little Saigon in Orange County or Koreatown in Los Angeles. The San Gabriel Valley used to be a one-time stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan in Southern California, but now it’s a gigantic Chinatown. All of these communities figured prominently in our class—Little Saigon came to be in the wake of massive refugee migrations after the Vietnam War, Koreatown was the site of one of the worst riots in American history, the first truly “multi-racial race riot,” and Monterey Park was the “first suburban Chinatown,” a world-famous ethnoburb interconnected with some of the most important financial and cultural centers in Asia. Having talked about the history of these places, why not take a visit?

And so we did. I got money from the College, we rented a minivan, packed the thing with snacks and drinks, and on Sunday, November 18, we took what my students dubbed an “Academic Adventure.” We left UCSB at 9:00 a.m., got to Little Saigon by 11:00, and had pho at the Asian Garden Mall by 11:30. We walked around the totalizing experience that is Little Saigon. We took lots of pictures—a figure of Santa next to a figure of Buddha, jewelry stores and food vendors, your basic Asian pharmacy with dried seahorses and deer antler, and Buddhist monks walking around with one or two white acolytes. I reminded my students that this was Westminster, California, whose school district once produced Mendez v. Westminster (1947), the case where white folks attempted to maintain separate public schools for their kids and Mexican kids. How could the town fathers back then have ever predicted so many Vietnamese in their beloved community? Was this vibrant Asian American district a complete nightmare, or was it a sign of racial progress? We were still pondering that question as we stopped at the local cemetery, which now has a special wing for Vietnamese Americans resting in peace. The best plots faced a pagoda atop a reflecting pond. 

We were off to the San Gabriel Valley in the afternoon, driving through Valley Boulevard, the commercial heart of one of the largest suburban Chinatowns in North America. This used to be where middle class white workers from industrial Los Angeles had settled during and after World War II, and this was because race-based segregation meant that African American, Asian, and Latino workers had to live along the 110 corridor from San Pedro to South Central. Valley Boulevard is amazing: anchored by Asian transnational banks, it’s now a series of strip malls full of dentists, plastic surgeons, Chinese restaurants, and more Chinese restaurants. It’s an affluent community—here a Lexus, there a Benz, and look at that lady in way-cool shades, wearing her bling. We stopped at the Ranch 99 in Monterey Park, where one of my students picked up a gigantic Chinese-language phone book that listed every imaginable service that an affluent Chinese American suburbanite family could want. Indeed, the Immigration Act of 1965 and the Immigration Act of 1990 drew skilled workers and affluent immigrants to the United States in record numbers, and if one needed proof of how that changed America, this place was it.

Finally, toward late afternoon, we were in Koreatown, through Vermont, Wilshire, and Olympic, through city blocks that had the highest concentration of Korean-owned businesses outside of Korea. We stopped at the Koreatown Galleria: two full floors of mall-style shopping, and a basement with a fully stocked Korean supermarket. There’s the Hello Kitty store on the top floor, and right next to it, the Korean Hello Kitty knock-off store. (It’s sort of like Hello Kitty, but not really.) Indeed, as one of my students pointed out, Hello Kitty-ness seems to be the one thing that unites little girls of all ethnicities and races. In the lower level, at the market, it was Koreans everywhere. One of my students took a picture of a box of squirmy squid, but the fishmonger objected, and so she put her camera away. They were perhaps touchy about this kind of thing. I myself went after the Asian pears and yummy snacks, the boxes of spicy ramen and the jar of kim-chee, the kinds of things that are hard to get for a Korean American family in Santa Barbara. Afterwards, we had dinner with my older brother at a traditional Korean restaurant off of Olympic. Edward has published extensively on Koreatown, first as a Professor at USC, and more recently as the Director of the American Cultures Program at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles. My students got to hear about labor unrest in Koreatown, the growing divides between the Korean Americans who own the restaurants and supermarkets and their low-wage Latino and Korean immigrant workers, many of whom were undocumented. Edward also talked about how our family came to L.A. from Seoul in 1975, but I suppose whenever the two of us get together, we always seem to talk about our late mother.

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On the drive back, I asked my students to ponder our academic adventure. What did this all mean? What do we make of the rise of these vibrant and complex Asian ethnic communities, each similar and yet completely distinct from the other? We saw all of them in the same day, but their residents seemed to live apart, as though dwelling in separate worlds within a few zip codes of one another. Before the Immigration Act of 1965, cities in Southern California attempted “cradle-to-grave” segregation, largely in response to the demands of white political majorities who did not want to share political, social, or commercial spaces with people of color. But then what were Little Saigon, Koreatown, and the Chinese ethnoburb in the San Gabriel Valley, here and now? Was this “voluntary” segregation, and does that make it somehow less problematic? All of these areas were commercially vibrant—they were not economically depressed ethnic ghettoes, nor did any of us feel danger or discomfort wandering into these worlds because of our own racial or ethnic difference. These were not hostile places, nor did they seem born of hostility. Still, again, what were we to make of all this? Was this “progress,” and if so, how so?

For the remainder of the quarter, my students and I talked about their final honors project for our class, and we all agreed to write something about our academic adventure. By the end of the quarter, Garth Johnson, Ashley Arlotti, Ariana Dumpis, Catherine Nguyen, Lindsey Quock, and Pauline Vo each explored various aspects of our trip through themes we’d talked about in class—segregation, race-based inequality, ethnic suburbs, figuring out culture and difference in law and policy, and the danger of interracial conflict and violence. (Pauline joined us for our adventure, and she’s been with us ever since. She even made a movie about the trip, with a cool soundtrack and everything.) I talked about how academic work is really about sharing what you’ve seen and discovered—I talked about structuring an essay, then they shared drafts, and they produced a lovely collection of essays. What an amazing group of students. Every class should be like this. Every class should be an academic adventure.

John S.W. Park, M.P.P., Ph.D., Assistant Dean, College of Letters and Science and Associate Professor, Department of Asian American Studies teaches Asian American Studies 2, Asian Americans and Contemporary Race Relations.

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