2008.041.011 Oral History Interview with Frank Wu

Frank Wu is a civil rights lawyer, professor, and award-winning author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. His book has become an essential text in Asian American Studies. He currently teaches law at Howard University and frequently lectures on civil rights law. “When I was a kid growing up, the last thing I ever would have wanted to do was talk about or think about race, ethnicity,” he recalls in this interview. Frank grew up in Detroit, Michigan in the 1970s. His dad was an engineer at Ford Motor Company, which relied heavily on Asian workers for research, development and product design. He briefly discusses his experience of childhood cruelty on the playgrounds, and how the especially tough times in Detroit made it one of the hardest places in America to have an Asian face during the recession. He discusses how the confrontation leading up to the brutal murder of Vincent Chin in his city and how he or his cousin could have been the victim of this racial scapegoating and violence. It made him realize how words had the powerful to do damage but also to change the world. He reflects on dominant image of Asian Americans as the model minority myth, how it means that they should be submissive, passive, and deferential, and how it was first used to contrast Asian Americans with African Americans and other people of color. In his view, Asian American communities have generally not seen the importance of vigorous participation in democracy and the importance of making a fuss. His experiences as the first Asian American law professor at Howard University, the nation leading historically black institution, made Wu realize the importance of supporting other groups and sharing a common cause. Advancing civil rights, he believes, goes beyond self-interest and involves seeing that there are principles involved that affect others.

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I ride a motorcycle, I have a bright yellow motorcycle. It has a custom paintjob. I've got a yellow riding suit, kids see me and I tell them I'm the yellow power ranger and it's something that doesn't conform to any stereotype of how Asian Americans ought to behave, right? I ride because I enjoy riding, but I also enjoy making people pause for a moment.

I grew up in Detroit, Michigan, in the 1970s. I was always a little angry with my parents because I thought it was their fault that I face the childhood cruelty of the playground. You know, the Chink, Jap, Gook. So when I was a kid growing up, the last thing I ever would have wanted to do, was talk about or think about race; ethnicity. That all changed though, because I grew up in Detroit, the motor city. That was the hardest place in America to have an Asian face during that recession. My dad was an engineer for his entire career at Ford Motor Company. Indeed, if you'd gotten rid of all of the Asians from the motor city, research, development, product design would have come to a halt because all of the big three domestic automakers depended on Asian immigrants.

Times were tough all over the United States but they were even tougher in Detroit. So that's why this was the place for the Vincent Chin case. In 1982, a man named Vincent Chin, 27 year old of Chinese descent. He went out to celebrate his upcoming wedding, for a bachelor's party, he went to a strip club, ran into two other gentlemen who were autoworkers. And they looked over at Chin and started to use racial epithets, obscenities, and one of them ended up saying "you little motherfucker, it's cuz of you motherfuckers we're out of work". So before the evening was over they had taken a baseball bat and with repeated swings at Chin's body and his head, cracked his skull open and a few days later, he died of these mortal wounds.

Though I didn't know Chin, I didn't know his family; I knew that could have been me, that could have been my older cousin. That there was somebody whose experiences in the most brutal way demonstrated the power of words. Chink, Jap, Gook, that it wasn't enough to say as my teachers told me, just reply that sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. I became convinced that words could do damage, words were powerful. But that meant that words could be the means by which we change the world.

The dominant image of Asian Americans is the model minority myth, we all know this myth, it's the idea that I graduated from high school when I was 12, right? To be a model minority is to be submissive, passive, deferential, quiet. It's not to be a radical or rabble rouser or protestor, a civil rights activist, right? To be a model minority is to be different than a problem minority. That's actually how the term was first used, to contrast Asian Americans with African Americans and other people of color. Asian American communities, they have not seen, in general, the importance of vigorous participation and the hurly burly, the give and take of democracy; the value of making a fuss.

For most of my career I taught at Howard University, the nation's leading, historically black institution. I was the first Asian American law professor there. It changed my life profoundly, made me realize the importance of saying, "your cause is my cause, it is a common cause." Because if I stand up and just talk about the Vincent Chin case or other instances where, in my gut, I feel that could have been me, that's not civil rights at all. That's just self-interest, that's my own hurt feelings, my own sense that my life is on the line, what's crucial is that we see there are principles involved that affect others.

I'm Frank Wu. I'm a civil rights lawyer, author, professor and a motorcyclist.