Good Americans
During the Cold War years, Asian Americans are simultaneously heralded as a Model Minority and targeted as the perpetual foreigner. It is also a time of bold ambition, as Asian Americans aspire for the first time to national political office and a coming culture-quake simmers beneath the surface.
Episodes
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Breaking Through
S2020 E5 - 53m 34s
At the turn of the new millennium, the national conversation turns to immigration, race, and economic disparity. As the U.S becomes more diverse, yet more divided, a new generation of Asian Americans tackle the question, how do we as a nation move forward together?
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Generation Rising
S2020 E4 - 54m 11s
During a time of war and social tumult, a young generation fights for equality in the fields, on campuses and in the culture, and claim a new identity: Asian Americans. The war’s aftermath brings new immigrants and refugees who expand the population and the definition of Asian America.
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Good Americans
S2020 E3 - 54m 11s
During the Cold War years, Asian Americans are simultaneously heralded as a Model Minority and targeted as the perpetual foreigner. It is also a time of bold ambition, as Asian Americans aspire for the first time to national political office and a coming culture-quake simmers beneath the surface.
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A Question of Loyalty
S2020 E2 - 54m 1s
An American-born generation straddles their country of birth and their parents’ homelands.
CORRECTION: Certain errors in a previous version of this program have been corrected, including the statement that the Core Civic South Texas Family Residential Center separates children from their families, which is not the case, and the erroneous use of a photo of a different facility.
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Breaking Ground
S2020 E1 - 54m 11s
In an era of exclusion and U.S. empire, new immigrants arrive from China, India, Japan, the Philippines and beyond. Barred by anti-Asian laws they become America’s first “undocumented immigrants,” yet they build railroads, dazzle on the silver screen, and take their fight for equality to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Extras + Features
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He Fought in Vietnam, but He Had the Face of the Enemy
1m 10s
Asians Americans have fought for the U.S. military since the War of 1812. During the Vietnam conflict, thousands served. But many, like Mike Nakayama, soon discovered that their fellow GI’s looked at them and saw the face of the enemy.
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"It Reminds Me I Have a Legacy To Live Up To"
4m 10s
Annie Tan uncovers a dark moment in her family's history that has inspired her and many other Asian American activists to get involved and raise their voices.
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Learning Their Asian American Roots at San Quentin Prison
2m 26s
Across the bay from San Francisco State University, where students launched a historic strike for ethnic studies in 1968, Thanh Tran is the graduation speaker in his own Asian American studies class. ROOTS: Restoring Our Original True Selves is a program at San Quentin prison that addresses intergenerational trauma under the motto: “If you know history, you know yourself.”
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Tereza Lee Was the Inspiration for the Dream Act
39s
Tereza Lee was a promising young pianist who grew up with a secret. Her family was undocumented, and they feared that if discovered the family could be separated and face deportation. When a U.S. Senator heard her story, he introduced the 2001 DREAM Act, a bipartisan bill to provide a pathway to legal status for undocumented youth who immigrated as children. Tereza was the first “dreamer.”
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Hari Kondabolu Recalls the Perilous Days After 9/11
38s
Hari Kondabolu is a comedian by trade, born and bred in Queens, New York. But he recalls that in the xenophobic atmosphere after the attacks of 9/11, he and other South Asian Americans were targeted as foreigners, even terrorists.
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‘We Farmworkers Should Have an Organization of Our Own’
1m 41s
By 1965, the Filipino farmworkers in Delano, California’s grape fields had enough with low pay, no health benefits, and toxic working conditions.
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‘They Liked to Pit the Mexicans Against the Filipinos’
2m 16s
The Filipino farmworkers voted to strike, but they had to convince Cesar Chavez, the leader of the Mexican workers, to join them. The task was left to Larry Itliong. Together Filipino and Mexicans mounted a historic and victorious grape strike that electrified the world.
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Asians Were America’s First “Undocumented Immigrants”
30s
Connie Yu’s family story in the U.S. almost ended at the Angel Island Immigration Station, where her grandmother was detained for over a year, separated from her American-born children. In an atmosphere of nativism and hate, exclusionary laws have made Asians the nation’s first “undocumented immigrants.” Yet those who manage to stay, build families and communities in America.
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Patsy Mink: The First Woman of Color in the U.S. Congress
42s
Patsy Mink always defied the odds. She was one of two women in her law school class, and when law firms wouldn’t hire her, she hung her own shingle. In 1964 she defied Hawaii democratic party bosses and ran for U.S. Congress, and was the first woman of color to be elected to the office. She championed civil rights and women’s rights and carved a path for generations of women leaders.
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A Louisiana Family Discovers Their South Asian Roots
2m 38s
South Asians began arriving in significant numbers during the late 1800s. Most were men who settled in communities of color and faced segregation and laws against intermarriage with whites. Many formed multiracial families like Moksad Ali, a Bengali Muslim trader, who married an African American woman, Ella Blackman. Together they navigated race in an era of anti-Asian exclusion and Jim Crow.
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Asian Immigrants Helped Build the Silicon Valley
26s
Jerry Yang was part of the Asian American 1.5 generation, who were born in Asia but immigrated to the U.S. as children. With their bicultural experience and networks, he and other Asian immigrant entrepreneurs helped to establish Silicon Valley as the center of the global tech industry.
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The Astonishing Story of the Men Who Built the Railroad
2m 4s
They were young men with dreams who began their lives in America building the Transcontinental Railroad. They blasted through mountains of granite and endured brutal conditions to lay tracks that connected the Pacific to the Atlantic. Some, like Lee Wong Sang, became forebearers of Asian American families that thrive to this day.
Schedule
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