Dear Shoreline School Board, 

As our society is evolving as a whole, the topic of race and discrimination is always something that comes up–and some even believe it’s a controversial one to discuss. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has sparked nationwide interest in 2014 after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. However, during this era of reforming and building America into a place that holds more inclusivity, Asian Americans have been largely oppressed, facing discrimination and racism, especially with the outrage of COVID. Often we are reticent and don’t want to challenge authority or fight for what we believe in, and even when we do, no one listens. 

 Teachers make Asian American students feel uncomfortable in class when they are teaching Asian history. Not only is this based off of the lack of diversity and representation of Asian students in each classroom, but also because of the victimizing content that is taught, singling out Asian students, and making them feel ashamed and uncomfortable about their roots and culture. Some of the racism we’ve experienced in the classroom: 

• “American Born Chinese” by Gene Luen Yang is a book taught in high schools and it is filled with racist images and slurs making the non-Asian students laugh at the Asian students and causing the Asian students to feel extremely embarrassed. 
• Asia is also a very diverse continent but when mentioned in school, the first thoughts people have are Chinese, North Koreans, and Japanese. This is due to the lack of education in the school system causing students to wrongly assume every Asian fits into one of those three categories when in reality, Southeast Asians and Pacific Islander cultures are rarely talked about. Asians are not a monolith. Whole cultures are being erased and invisibilized.
• When one of us was talking about our large family in class, a friend said, “Well you know what they say, Asians breed like rats.” Comments like these are very dehumanizing.

Issues: 

• Teachers discriminating against whole Asian cultures and people and not being considerate in what they say
• Western media portrays false information about Asia and Asian countries causing people to believe everything they see due to insufficient education on Asia as a whole in our classrooms
• Not enough representation of Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander culture and education in our school curricula
• Not enough representation of students in the classroom causes Asian students to feel singled out when Asia is talked about
• The unchecked racism in the curriculum, misinformation, invisibilization create environments that are unsafe for Asian American students in peer to peer environments 

 

Who we are:

We are YouthKAN, and we are petitioning to change the education system around Asian Americans because knowledge is power and knowledge is the only thing that can override xenophobia, discrimination, and racism in our schools and beyond. 

We are a group of young high school Asian American students organizing to change up our school system for the better. YOUTHKAN is a Seattle-based organization empowering youth to spread awareness about Asian American mental health and racism. We believe that a large cause of Asian American discrimination comes from school–specifically due to the insufficient content taught, so we are speaking up and petitioning to make a change from the root. Today too many Asian Americans in the U.S. say they feel uncomfortable or straight up feel harassed by their teachers. For a change we want to learn more about things that empower us and more diversity in race with the teachers. If we look at most school teachers they are mostly/all white people. Occasionally there would be different races but rare enough to the point where it's a problem. We need this to change so us Asian American kids can feel safe and comfortable at school. School is how we get our future, and our future generation is getting discouraged and getting harassed. 

Changing what we learn from our history classes can help benefit our education. If more Asian history is taught, then asian students will finally learn more about their history and ourselves. For example, many of us are Korean American and we have never learned anything about Korea. Korea was never even mentioned in any of the history classes we have ever taken. If students like us don’t learn about our history and culture, our identities will be erased by dominant culture, which impacts our mental health and relationships. But why should schools care about this? 13% of our school district is made of Asian American students. We have faced discrimination for a long time.The covid 19 pandemic then increased that discrimination. If more asian history was taught in school, then in the future people will have a better knowledge of different asian cultures and limit violence due to ignorance in school. But why should we care about this? Well, it is so that the history can be continued to be taught for the next generations and not be forgotten to create a peaceful society for all.

 

We demand…

1. More of the budget to be dedicated to teachers and school workers of color. By getting young teachers of color, we will have a more diverse learning environment and be more comfortable in the classes. Also we want teachers to receive more training and resources about Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander history and culture. We need teachers who actually want to learn and teach students about history and culture.
2.  Teach a broader range of world history and culture. Give us more history on the smaller and less known Asian countries so that we can learn about other countries and their cultures. This will reduce racism inside school and out. Also teach us about how this history may have affected the U.S. or humanity. This gives power and confidence to the students by showing them people that look like them. 

Signed, 

YouthKAN youth and their supporters, representing students of

Shoreline School District,

Seattle Public Schools,

Edmonds School District,

Northshore School District,

Mukilteo School District, 

Federal Way School District