By KAREN UMEMOTO
George Orwell published a famous novel in 1949 about the rise of a dystopian authoritarian future. The book was entitled “1984.” In it, he states, “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”
What happens when our histories are erased, forgotten or never even known? We saw the consequences of erasure during the pandemic. Through our invisibility in the history books, many people confused lies for truth. Building on latent stereotypes, we were portrayed as either the “Perpetual Foreigner” spreading the “China virus” or the successfully rich “Model Minority” who didn’t suffer like everyone else.
Both stereotypes were made harmful. People died from the lies that fueled anti-Asian hate.
In this moment, we were reminded of the simple fact that a large swath of the population across the country still knows very little about who we are as Asian Americans in all our diversity and humanity. There have been many surveys since to confirm that. According to The Asian American Foundation’s 2025 STAATUS Index report, 40% of Americans believe that Asian Americans are more loyal to their countries of origin than to the U.S., doubling since 2021.
Public misperceptions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have led to cyclical spikes in anti-Asian violence and growing racial division in the U.S. In 2024, Stop AAPI Hate reported that over half (53%) of AAPI adults experienced some form of hate — including a staggering 72% of young adults (18-29).
The impact of this racism on AAPIs’ self-perception is grave: just 40% of Asian Americans completely agree that they belong in the U.S., citing racial discrimination and lack of representation as the top reasons for feeling excluded.
Karen Umemoto spoke at a TAAF (The Asian American Foundation) summit in New York City in 2023.
Erasure in history gives flight to falsities that further threaten democracy. A NORC survey found that only 44% strongly agree that the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II was wrong. If there is one thing that we can learn from Japanese American incarceration history, it is the importance of speaking up for truth to avoid the wrath of a misguided public when politicians and their followers foment anti-[fill in the blank] hysteria.
The lessons from the wrongful incarceration have yet to be learned as we see violations of due process all around us.
To make our histories visible, we must begin in the classroom, where students form foundational understandings of people, places, and themselves. To gain knowledge about Japanese Americans along with others hidden from public history, activists in the 1960s occupied offices and took up picket signs to establish ethnic studies, including Asian American studies.
At UCLA, Cal State Long Beach, Fullerton and elsewhere in the Los Angeles region, there were scores of students and community members who fought for and started this new field, inspired by those at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley. Many are familiar names who have remained active locally for many years – Miya Iwataki, Mike Murase, Casimiro Tolentino, Congresswoman Judy Chu, Vivian Matsushige, Mary Uyematsu, Florante and Rose Ibanez, Evelyn Yoshimura, Brenda Sunoo, just to name a few.
Ethnic studies scholars and those in related fields have uncovered little-known histories of Black, Latinx, Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islander peoples. The field has corrected long-standing misconceptions for over 57 years and it is now in the crosshairs of the attacks against “DEI.”
On one hand, it is unfathomable that basic values of diversity, equity and inclusion have somehow become objects of scorn. But DEI also represents a threat to authoritarianism in lifting stories of past movements for democracy. It represents norms of equity in a time of stark polarization between rich and poor. And goals of inclusivity stand in contrast to efforts to exclude people of color from exercising their political rights or becoming an American.
In the story of rising authoritarian tyranny, George Orwell also writes, “Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.” The present battle over control of the past has already played out in book bans across the country.
PEN America has been tracking book bans and has documented nearly 16,000 bans in public schools nationwide since 2021. They state that such a number has not been seen since the Red Scare McCarthy era of the 1950s. These book bans are not merely acts of censorship. They represent a battleground that will determine who controls the future.
A current threat to the right to our history comes from those who are keen to ban any critique of Israel under the banner of “anti-semitism.” Accusations of anti-semitism have been used against Columbia, Harvard, and now UCLA as the Trump Administration is demanding $1 billion in fines.
Closer to home, there is a growing controversy over California Assembly Bill 715, ironically co-authored by members of the “diversity caucuses.” In the version last heard in the Assembly, the bill’s broad definitions resembled national discourse conflating critical portrayals of Israel’s past or current colonial exploits with antisemitism.
This would effectively chill legitimate classroom discussion and debate on an important current issue in international affairs and muffle protest against what many decry as genocide against Palestinians.
The fight for ethnic studies, the right to speak our truths, and the sanctity of academic freedom stand in the front lines of efforts to preserve democracy. Education teaches students to separate truth from lies, fact from fiction, and to see the world from multiple perspectives, including through the lens of the lesser-known.
When the U.S. Army took down the story of the all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the most decorated military unit in history, that act of erasure was met with outcry and most of it was soon restored. It will be important for us to follow the example of those who refused to be struck from public memory.
This means upholding academic freedom, freedom of the press and freedom of speech and protest — key pillars of a democratic society that we can never take for granted.
Karen Umemoto, Ph.D. is professor of Asian American studies and urban planning and the Helen and Morgan Chu Chair and director of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA.