Waving the Flag No Simple Matter for Asian Americans
By Ling-Chi Wang, Pacific News Service, July 3, 2001

July 4 is apple pie and hot dogs and fireworks and Yankee Doodle, the red white and blue and, at its best, a true celebration of independence. But for some Americans, waving the flag is a complex comment on their situation today and in the past. PNS Contributor Prof. Ling-Chi Wang is Chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California at Berkeley.

In May, Oregon Congressman David Wu - the nation's only Asian American member of the House of Representatives - was invited to the U.S. Department of Energy to deliver a speech to Asian Americans in celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

But he was stopped at the door by a security guard who asked - several times, the Congressman says - if he was an American. Wu offered his identity card showing he was a member of Congress. The guards still denied him entry.

Eventually, a supervisor intervened and Wu and an aide were allowed to enter the building so that he could give his talk about Asian American community progress during the last 200 years.

The Energy Department claims the question is asked of everyone entering, but Wu's colleague, Congressman Michael E. Capuano, passed the door the next day by simply checking a box on a form.

For most Chinese Americans, this was another illustration of how pervasive racial profiling has become, and how paranoid our government is in its dealing with any Chinese Americans.

An outraged S.B. Woo, key founder of the 80/20 Initiative, a Asian American political action committee, urged every Chinese American to buy an American flag and hang it out the window or display it in the front yard on July 4.

S.B. Woo is a former lieutenant governor of Delaware and a professor of atomic and molecular physics. His deep admiration for American democracy gave him a vision of many thousands of Chinese homes festooned with American flags sending out the message that "we too are Americans."

But no sea of flags can uproot America's deep racism against Chinese Americans. Professor Woo fails to recognize this. He should know that citizenship and loyalty don't involve flag-waving or pledges of allegiance. They come from the exercise of our rights under the U.S. constitution.

Flag-waving has particular significance for older Chinese Americans because, during the 1950s and 1960s, they were compelled to raise the flag of the Republic of China (Taiwan) on every ceremonial occasion to prove their loyalty to the U.S. Why? Because flying the ROC flag also signified their hatred of Taiwan and America's then-number-one enemy, "Red China."

No amount of American flag raising will prevent what happened to Congressman David Wu -- who may well wear an American flag pinned on his lapel, and has lots of flags in his offices in Washington, D.C. and in Portland.

Only courageous actions, not words -- definitely not flag-flying -- will get us anywhere. Silence and meaningless gestures mean acceptance of second-class citizenship.

Accused Los Alamos scientist Dr. Wen Ho Lee also has an American flag in his home. That did not protect him from being subjected to judicial lynching instigated by the government and to nine months of cruel and unusual punishment.

Nothing in the U.S. Constitution requires any American to raise a flag in order to establish citizenship or prove loyalty.

The U.S. Supreme Court has steadfastly overturned the conviction of any American who burned the American flag as an act of protest. Burning of the American flag is an act of desecration and presumably, disloyalty, yet the court sees it as a legitimate expression of commitment to the Bill of Rights and patriotism.

I am not advocating flag-burning, but I do not think people should hang their American flags on July 4. Both are legitimate exercises of free speech guaranteed by the Constitution.