Asian Americans: Norman Chen
August 3rd, 2023
“Belonging is so core to our existence, our contributions, our engagement.”
Norman Chen is the CEO of the Asian American Foundation or TAAF. We discuss racism against Asians and the pursuit of belonging through philanthropy, civic engagement, and education.
Deep misconceptions about Asian Americans persist. Narrative change is key for people to see Asian Americans as really being Americans. Only about 1.5% of schools offer a formal Asian American studies program, although Asian American history and Pacific Islander history is a critical part of American history. TAAF aims to build greater belonging and prosperity for AAPIs everywhere.
Follow Norman on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/normanlschen
Follow Mila on Twitter:
Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/
Love Future Hindsight? Take our Listener Survey!
http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=6tI0Zi1e78vq&ver=standard
Take the Democracy Group’s Listener Survey!
https://www.democracygroup.org/survey
Want to support the show and get it early?
https://patreon.com/futurehindsight
Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Norman Chen
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producers: Zack Travis
-
Norman Chen Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:04] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
When I first arrived in the US from Indonesia more than three decades ago, being Asian outside of places like San Francisco felt like a novelty. I was often the only Asian person in a room, to be sure. There were some strange questions like if I lived in a tree where I came from. But all in all, I felt warmly welcomed. Since that time in the late 80s, the population of Asian Americans has tripled. Given the large number of Asians all around, I had this idea that I would feel more comfortable. But in fact, I feel the opposite. I feel less safe and I feel less welcome. Since 2020, it has been abundantly clear that racism against Asians is alive and well.
To help us understand how we can build a safer, more inclusive future for AAPIs everywhere, we're joined by Norman Chen. He's the CEO of the Asian American Foundation, or TAAF. Norman, welcome to Future Hindsight. Thank you for joining us.
Norman Chen: [00:01:25] Thank you for having me, Mila. I'm delighted to be here.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:28] I thought we should start at the top of why TAAF was founded. We're coming to this conversation, both of us, as Asians living in America. And as I mentioned, things feel worse for the AAPI community right now. Tell us about TAAF's founding and why the timing was important.
Norman Chen: [00:01:47] Yes. TAAF was founded in May 2021, so right after the Atlanta Spa killings. You know, there had been increasing tensions and negative sentiment towards the AAPI community for months because of Covid, because of political rhetoric. And we were founded because we needed to address these concerns. One of our partners was seeing increased incidents of anti AAPI sentiment on social media, and they said we need to form an organization to address these risks and to support our community. So it was really born out of the anti-Asian American hate over the last three years. But our long term mission is much more broad. It's actually not only to address anti-hate, but also to build on education and narrative change and to create
that greater sense of belonging for our community and also prosperity for our community.
Mila Atmos: [00:02:37] Right. Well, let's talk about the incidents of hate first, because that's really one of the founding reasons for you. And in fact, before TAAF, you co- founded a nonprofit called Leading Asian Americans to Unite for Change. And your goal there is to envision a society where Asian-Americans are treated fairly -- without racism, prejudice and discrimination. So at LAAUNCH, the acronym for your organization, you created a landmark study. And I think it's important we talk about this study, the Status Index, which is an index about American attitudes towards Asian Americans. What did you discover?
Norman Chen: [00:03:17] Yeah, that study we felt was really important because there are attacks against our community, yet very few studies about what are the root causes of these attacks. So we asked basic questions about how Asian Americans are perceived by Americans such as, "Hey, can you name a prominent Asian American?" We asked that of 3,000 people in the first year and another 10,000 since then. Over the last two years, we had no idea what people were going to say. And actually the results were quite surprising and even shocking. First answer, the number one answer was, "I don't know. You know, actually, I cannot think of a prominent Asian American," which really reflects the invisibility of our community in the society. And these are people of all racial backgrounds all around the country, all age groups. So your average American, if you will. The second answer after "I don't know," was Jackie Chan, which is also not what we expected. I mean, Jackie Chan. We love Jackie Chan, but he's not even American, right? He's a famous Hong Kong martial arts film actor. But that's how people think of Asian Americans most broadly, because he was popular in movies and those movies circulated around the country. The third answer was Bruce Lee. And now we're starting to see a pattern, right? These are martial artists. That's how people in America think of Asian Americans in various stereotypical ways. When they think about us in movies, they see men as gangsters and martial artists, and they see women as prostitutes and martial artists, or maids. So these very stereotypical images, these are some of the lessons we gained from the Status Index. And so that was really, really powerful.
Mila Atmos: [00:04:50] Hmm. Interesting. Well, I will say here that I am often mistaken for the maid, everywhere I go, still to this day. To combat this, I wear makeup when I walk out of my house because that makes me less prone to being mistaken for being a maid. And there's no shame in being a maid, of course. I have to say this here. It's only that if they think you're the maid, they treat you like you're a second class citizen, like you are not quite human. That's the problem with being mistaken for the maid.
Norman Chen: [00:05:18] Absolutely. Last year, for the second year of the Status Index, we asked the questions about belonging, Mila. We asked people -- all races, "How much do you truly feel like you belong and are accepted in America?" And again, we didn't know what the answer was. Asian Americans were the least likely to truly feel like we belong and are accepted in this country, followed by the Black community and Latino community. Right. And so that was a new insight. And then this year, we asked, "why do you feel like you don't belong or truly accepted?" And the number two answers were: one, racism and discrimination. You know, when you get treated so poorly, of course you don't feel like you truly belong and are accepted. And you talked about your personal experiences. And then secondly, the lack of role models that we're seeing of our community in society. Right. Lack of people who are in government. There are no AAPIs on the Supreme Court. Right. The bamboo ceiling affects many people in the corporate sector. Et cetera. Et cetera. There is a real dearth of AAPI representation at the senior levels that contributes, along with the racism and discrimination, to this sense of lack of belonging for our community.
Mila Atmos: [00:06:25] Mm hmm. Yeah, let's dive into that, because I noticed that in your mission statement and it really jumped out at me, you know, because I think about belonging all the time. But let me read your mission statement for the benefit of the listener. "To serve the Asian American and Pacific Islander community in their pursuit of belonging and prosperity that is free from discrimination, slander, and violence." So what does, what does it mean to belong? And how do you foster belonging?
Norman Chen: [00:06:58] Yeah, mean, belonging to us is like one of those basic things you need to have to really thrive and prosper in a culture is to feel that you are accepted here, that you're among peers, that your values, your culture is appreciated. And as an Asian American who was born in the US, Mila, I was always very conscious as a kid that I was a minority. You know, I grew up on the East Coast; weren't a lot of Asian
Americans around. And, you know, kids always are trying to fit in. And when you're different racially in other ways, you know, you're always very sensitive to that. And so growing up, I experienced a sense of otherness, you know, not being in the in-crowd per se. And it was slowly during my life when I went to Asian American camps or I went to college in Boston where there are more Asian Americans or school here in California, where I started to build up that sense of identity and pride, which is what our parents always say, like, be proud of your Asian culture. You're like, Why? You know, most Asian Americans who grew up in the States, had that moment in their life unless they grew up in Hawaii or maybe parts of California, you really thought it was not an advantage. You just wanted to be like everybody else. But it wasn't until I then spent 20 years in Asia pursuing my identity to really learn more about what it's like to live in the majority. And so I lived in Hong Kong, Mila, for 20 years and got to really soak up living in the majority, where there's no glass ceiling, where all the bosses are Asian. Maybe what you experienced also in Asia. And that was really empowering for me. And so that gave me a kind of a new perspective as a second generation Asian American about why so many people who come from Asia have this pride of their culture and their identity from day one. You know, my kids were born in Hong Kong and they lived there till they're eight and ten, and they've never questioned about being Asian. They've always been fiercely proud of Asian culture, Asian food. And when they come to the US and they see kind of the US and all its challenges and etcetera, they kind of ask questions, "Gosh, what's going on here? This place seems to be a mess." Whereas you know, things were better in Asia. So having that perspective and that pride in your identity is foundational. And that's what we're trying to build within our community; more of an appreciation of who we are, to have that sense of belonging so that we can then move on and really, really prosper. It's like the hierarchy of needs, right, that Maslow has identified. You don't have safety, you don't have belonging, you can't thrive, you can't be self-actualized. And that's really part of our mission.
Mila Atmos: [00:09:21] Um, well, so I have this hypothesis that one of the reasons people are not civically engaged here in the United States is because they don't feel like they belong. And that's across all sections of our demographics in this country, of course. You know, they say to themselves, "that's not for me, that's for someone else." And I read up on some research at Pew in 2018 for Asians. Naturalized citizens had a voting turnout rate of 42.7%, compared with only 36.7% for those Asians born in the US. Notably, between 2000 and 2018, the number of eligible voters among Asian
immigrants doubled from 3.3 million to 6.9 million. And what surprised me the most is that in 2018, naturalized citizens accounted for about two thirds of all US Asian eligible voters. So for me, being a naturalized citizen, voting is a way to affirm my citizenship and my sense of belonging. So what's your take on this and do you think that actually we can foster belonging through practicing democracy?
Norman Chen: [00:10:38] I think it's a beautiful, it's a brilliant insight, Mila. And actually, I've never heard it articulated that way. So thank you. Belonging is so core to our existence, our contributions, our engagement. We know that people who feel like they belong are better workers, better members of corporations. And so the analogy you make, the reality you talk about and are needing to feel like we belong to really engage with our government with civic engagement makes absolute sense. And I think you're right. I think it really it's chicken or the egg, right? More belonging leads to more civic engagement or more civic engagement leads to more belonging. It's probably both. And so, we at TAAF believe that belonging is fundamental, that leads to prosperity, and we also believe that we do have a great opportunity, the community, to be more civically engaged. Politically speaking, we've seen already in the last few elections how critical the AAPI vote has been in key battleground states, states like Pennsylvania, states like Georgia. And we've made the difference in many of these important critical elections. And so going forward, more engagement would really be impactful. It allows us to have more voice, allow us to have more ownership, but it also requires organizations to realize that we have to spend the work to reach AAPI voters, because oftentimes, you know, 60 to 70% of our community is first generation. So oftentimes they need to have the communication be in language versus just in English. And so making that extra effort to reach out to these critical voters, which will lead to then greater voter turnout, I think is a really virtuous cycle that we want to support.
Mila Atmos: [00:12:22] Mm hmm. Well, you mentioned something interesting just now, which I think is often lost, is that, you know, Asians are not a monolith. There's not like one Asian language. It's not like one Asian identity. So one question I always have when I see Asian-American organizations is, how do you manage a different Asian origins? And since you've spent time in Hong Kong, I'm sure you're familiar with this, that there's a lot of prejudice among Asians towards each other, especially if you are in Asia and there's still a lot of animosity about WWII. So of course we know here in the US, Asian American was conceived as a model to build political power. And in a way it
feels like Asians in America are a microcosm of what we like to call the melting pot, the American melting pot. What have you learned from your experience in working across different backgrounds, and how does that inform your work at TAAF?
Norman Chen: [00:13:14] Yeah. I mean people always ask us, you have 50 ethnic groups, 100 plus languages. How do you deal with all that? And to me, I don't try to solve that. To me, I celebrate our diversity. And, you know, in Indonesian culture, just like in Chinese culture, in Indian culture, there are so many dialects and villages and tribes, and we love to go down that black hole and say, "Oh, what village are you from?" You know, what is your culture and your language and your food? And it makes our culture so rich, right? But we have so much in common as well. We share so many values about family, education, health care, safety, immigration, etcetera. And we see the opportunity here to build more power across our community. So that is one of the missions of TAAF, is to build economic power, to build cultural power, but ultimately also to build political power. And so how do we come together to build that power is really, I think, a tremendous opportunity. And I am optimistic because we're seeing whereas maybe my parents' generation, they came over from China and Taiwan, they still mostly hang out with people who speak Mandarin Chinese. My generation, we mix much more. We spent a lot of time here in the US. Some of us are born in the US. My wife is Japanese American. I've learned a lot about Japanese American and Japanese culture. My kids, who are teenagers, I mean, they mix and mingle with all different kinds of people and we love that. Maybe not the melting pot, but maybe more the salad concept, right? We're really mixing people together, but celebrating the different flavors and colors and smells within the salad. I feel that that is really the way America is going demographically. And so I'm optimistic that we'll be able to celebrate the diversity, but still come together in a powerful way.
Mila Atmos: [00:14:58] I love the salad concept. That's so strong because, you know, you're mixing the flavors, but you're not melting together to form something new and and losing sort of a part of the strength of what your diversity can bring to the table.
Mila Atmos: [00:15:12] We are taking a quick break to share about a fellow Democracy Group podcast that we all know and love called When the People Decide. It's a podcast about how everyday people are shaping democracy. The first season told the stories of people who used ballot initiatives to bring issues they care about directly to their fellow
voters. And the second season out this summer looks at cities and towns that are strengthening democracy at the local level through reforms like participatory budgeting and civic media. When the People Decide is supported by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State and produced by LWC Studios. Learn more at thePeopleDecide.show.
And now let's return to my conversation with Norman Chen.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:04] So I wanted to talk about your philanthropy model. Why did you pick that and how does that model help execute the mission?
Norman Chen: [00:16:14] You know, at the highest level, Mila, our goal is to do what we can to support the AAPI community. And one statistic that your listeners may not be familiar with is the fact that we make up about 7% of our population in the US, of the US population -- 7%. But we receive only 0.2% of philanthropy. So people really are not giving to the AAPI community to support all the needs that we have in terms of racism, representation, etcetera. And so that's one of the areas that TAAF is playing a major role is this under-investment, under-support for the AAPI community. And so one of our missions is to really unlock more resources. And when we launched with TAAF, we had a giving challenge. We went out to corporations and individuals and foundations and asked them, Hey, what are you doing for the AAPI community over the next five years? You know, and can you quantify that for us in terms of dollars? We talked to big corporations and individuals and largely aggregated those numbers and it came out to $1.1 billion that people were committing to the AAPI community over five years, which is tremendous. Right. What we're actually seeing is that that money is actually going into the community. Each year, hundreds of millions of dollars are going into the community. In 2021 alone, over $140 million from these Giving Challenge partners went to over 100 AAPI organizations. So the money is coming in, but we want to unlock more resources, new resources, because there's still a lot of people who don't appreciate the AAPIs are underfunded. We're still under attack. We're underrepresented. There's a huge opportunity here to channel more resources. So that's a key part of our work.
Mila Atmos: [00:17:57] Tell us about a partner organization that is working in the community that exemplifies what you're saying here about bringing the money into the community and what is the work that they do?
Norman Chen: [00:18:08] Yeah, absolutely. So one of our great partners is Walmart. Walmart has committed funding to racial equity to supporting organizations like TAAF's. And so we work with Walmart in multiple ways, for example, on creating an AAPI database. Right. So right now, if people are trying to find what organizations to support, there's no centralized resource that people can go to. What we've done with their help and with other partners is actually to create the first ever comprehensive database so that if you want to look for mental health organizations that serve the AAPI community in California, you type that all in, and five organizations will pop up, right? Both big organizations and small organizations. You know, it's just a search engine. And so from that, you as a donor or as a volunteer can say, okay, I'm going to reach out to the executive director at those organizations and see how I can support them and play a role. So ultimately, we're building the infrastructure that raises the visibility of AAPI organizations, thanks to the generous support of Walmart, so that more funding and support can go to these organizations. That is something which can continue and be sustainable over time versus just, you know, a one-time grant that just gets used up this year but doesn't build long term impact, long term sustainability. Procter and Gamble is a great partner of ours as well. They are using storytelling, right. And narrative change to raise awareness of AAPI issues. And they've done a beautiful commercial called "The Name." I don't know if you've seen it, but they actually have a young Korean American girl talk about how teachers and friends are always mispronouncing her name and not really making the effort to learn about who she is as an individual and her culture, and then how once people start to recognize who she is, she blossoms. She feels more like she belongs. And it's such a beautiful story and it'll bring a tear to your eye. So check out The Name at P&G. Panda Express supports our work with Sundance. So again, we want to support more young Asian American filmmakers and Pacific Islander filmmakers. We held the first ever official AAPI House on Main Street in Sundance this year, and we had 3,000 people coming through. We had beautiful seminars and discussions. Panda Express really believes in narrative change is important. They supported our work there and also with a scholarship program for young filmmakers so that more stories like Everything Everywhere, All at Once can occur. And we're super excited about that.
Mila Atmos: [00:20:35] That's terrific. Well, for you to mention Walmart came out of left field for me, but that's terrific that they are funding this search engine to find resources
for Asian Americans. You talked about narrative change just now. What is the predominant narrative? And and I want to tie this back to what you said earlier about Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. And I have to say, I was totally floored. I had no idea that that was what the research came up with, that people thought that they were, first of all, Americans. So what is the narrative and why is it important to change that? What is the narrative that you want people to actually understand about Asians?
Mila Atmos: [00:21:13] Right. In the past, as mentioned, a lot of the narrative has been stereotypical, seeing Asian-Americans as martial artists, as maids, as prostitutes, etcetera. It hasn't provided a multi-dimensionality to our characters, to show that we can be all kinds of people and not just the stereotypical roles that I played or engineers or technicians or nerds. So to us, storytelling and narrative change is going to tell our stories in a way which is more authentic, which shows our great diversity, which is hopefully more positive and really cements in the minds of Americans across the country, that Asian-Americans are integral to American history, American culture, American society. And so recently we've had programs like Everything Everywhere, All at Once, which has been just an incredible success, which shows a classic mother daughter struggle in America. And so it's a powerful medium to communicate that message. We've also had programs like Beef, which is number one program on Netflix. We had two Asian Americans who are going through road rage in Los Angeles. Right? It's not making fun of our accents or our cultures or stereotypical roles. It's also multi- ethnic casts versus just an all-Asian cast. That's the kind of mainstream content that we want to see. We want to support and see more widespread around the country.
Mila Atmos: [00:22:40] Well, I have a question about the anti-hate work that you're doing, because this is maybe the most difficult. You know, changing narrative is -- I don't want to say that that's easy, but it's it is relatively easy to put a movie together and air it as opposed to trying to get people to stop hating you or to act on that. In any case, tell us about the anti-hate work that TAAF is seeing is actually working. What does it look like?
Norman Chen: [00:23:06] Yeah, there are incredible organizations that have been on the ground in cities around the country dealing with anti-Asian attacks in your community, and it's very hard work, right. People are getting attacked, elderly people coming to you for help and support. And a lot of it's responding to those attacks. And so
providing victim support, helping them legally, financially, medically. Et cetera. And so it's grueling work. And so what we do at the very beginning, or initially, just provide resources to those organizations. So right now, we are in nine cities around the country. We have about 30 or 40 organizations we're working with. We provide multiyear grants to many of those organizations, six figure grants to them. So they have the resources, the people, the ability to respond to the community. That's the minimum going forward. What we want to do is expand the network from nine cities to 25, 30 cities, which will cover 90% of the population in this country. Currently we're covering about 40%. So number one is expanding the network, providing the resources and support, but also helping them convene and support each other and learn from each other. So, hey, what did you do in New York? And can we apply that here in San Francisco? What's working in New York City to reduce the hate and attacks against our community? Are street patrols workin? Is bystander training working? Is more public PR about the AAPI community working? What is working and how can we share that around the country? One of our great superpowers we found besides supporting organizations is convening organizations. You know, maybe it's Covid, maybe because we're Asian, but we love to get together and talk and catch up and share and support each other. And that's so powerful because this work is, again, so demanding. So we do a lot to work with bringing these organizations together, having them brainstorm on ideas that are most effective and really trying to, in the future, reduce or prevent these type of attacks from occurring in the future. It's just really necessary and useful. And we've seen, again, real power from these convenings and these get-togethers.
Mila Atmos: [00:25:11] That's great. So as an Asian American living in New York City, I have to say I did stop taking the subway for some time. I started taking it again, which is great because it's very convenient. But whenever there is an attack and it hasn't stopped, of course, on Asian-Americans and somebody, you know, on social media puts out the #stopAAPIhate. I want to say it's not working. The hashtag, you know, it's a little bit like, what else could we be doing? Or what are you seeing at TAAF where you're like, this is the thing that is unexpectedly really good and is helping people on the ground in real time.
Norman Chen: [00:25:51] I think part of it is really helping people understand what resources are out there. Right now, people feel that they're very alone and they feel, again, unsafe and that they don't belong. So letting people know that there are people in
the community that are supporting to be with you, a lot of it is that that nurturing, that support, that's very, very important in the short term. Okay. But in the long term, it's the education piece. It's the narrative change piece where for people to see us as really being Americans and that Asian American history and Pacific Islander history is a critical part of American history. Again, in our survey at the Status Index, we asked people, Can you name a prominent historical event that affected AAPIs? And again, most people will say, "I don't know." The number one answer after that is Japanese incarceration during WWII, which is widely taught. But then after that it drops off. Right. People don't know about the Chinese Exclusion Act. They don't know about the massive contribution Asian Americans did to build the railroad, which allowed our country to come together and expand; many other contributions they are not aware of. And so these are elements that we are now incorporating into K through 12 education in schools all over the country, as well as in higher education to promote the teaching of Asian American studies in universities and colleges. Currently, only about 1.5% of schools offer a formal Asian American studies program. And that's just a huge missed opportunity. So it's short-term fighting the fire, addressing the victims and their support. We also provide a go fund me to provide financial support to victims right away. But then longer term, it's changing the perceptions, the storytelling, the stereotypes of Asian Americans, both through education and narrative change and also in terms of increasing representation of our community and senior leadership roles. So those factors that are leading to this lack of belonging, the hate, and also the lack of visibility of role models we're addressing concretely with programs.
Mila Atmos: [00:27:45] Yeah, I love the education bit. You were instrumental in adding an Asian American puppet to Sesame Street, Ji-Young. And like you just said, you're advocating to bring AAPI studies to every state, and you've just explained why this education bit is so important. What do you think concretely can happen in the short term in terms of getting people to accept an AAPI curriculum and what should be in the curriculum, sort of like a short preview of what you should be studying about AAPI history in the United States?
Norman Chen: [00:28:19] Yeah, part of our work is not only to advocate for this type of curricula, but also to work with organizations that are developing the curricula. So we actually support a few wonderful organizations. There's a group called the Asian American Education Project that is working to take the content from the Asian American
PBS series and make that into classroom materials. And so they've been doing work and actually developing the content that's applicable to all K through 12. Again, they do it by age group and then they actually are working on professional development workshops to train and teach teachers how to share this information with their students. So we work with experts on the curricula, including that group, and also UCLA. UCLA is developing a digital media textbook that will be online that will include really high quality content from leading AAPI scholars that will then be able to be used by classrooms around the country and just ourselves. We had a small project that we just launched, which was the first ever AAPI graphic novel for kids about AAPI history. So it's a booklet, which introduces AAPI history in a fun, engaging way to middle school kids and even high school kids. We just finished the first chapter. It'll be three chapters, and we're also sharing that now to youth organizations, to community organizations, to comic book stores all around the country. So they have those tools as well. Ji-Young is an incredible example also so that kids who are watching Sesame Street now can see somebody whom they can identify with if they're AAPI, and recently we had the first ever Filipino American muppet added to Sesame Street. So there is progress there. More materials, more access to students in classrooms. That's a key part of really promoting that we are integral to American society.
Mila Atmos: [00:30:09] Excellent. I love the part about teaching the teachers, doing teacher training, because I think that's also very important. It's not like you're just going to teach this material sort of like an add-on, but really getting the teacher on the same page.
Norman Chen: [00:30:25] Absolutely. And a key principle for us, Mila, is that Asian American history is American history. It's not a side program, a side curriculum. When you teach American history, you talk about WWII. You should be talking about not only Japanese incarceration, but also the Japanese soldiers that fought in the 442nd heroically in Europe. Right. You should be talking about how laws were created, which included Asian Americans that have led to permanent laws within our country, such as the Naturalization Law, right, birthright naturalization. So, Wong Kim Ark was a Chinese person born in the US, went to China to see his family, and when he came back was prohibited from coming back. And so he basically created a case to argue that since he was born in the US, he should be entitled to a US citizenship. And that led to all future people who are born in the US to being entitled to citizenship. And that was due to
Wong Kim Ark. So these are important cases that our community and the broader American public need to know about to see -- again -- the critical role that we've been playing here for over 300 years, right?
Mila Atmos: [00:31:36] Yes, this is a good reminder, this piece of history, how much it matters. In fact, when you talk about immigration, this should be mentioned widely, right? That it is.
Norman Chen: [00:31:45] Sure.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:45] A Chinese American who brought the case and has solidified the case for birthright citizenship. So I know that this is, to some extent a passion project for you to be the CEO of TAAF. You've had a long career before this. Tell us about your journey and your history of activism. How did you get here?
Norman Chen: [00:32:06] Yeah, you know, part of my journey to Asia was to learn more about myself from a personal cultural heritage point of view. But it was also to pursue my interest at the time, which was in health care. So I worked in health care on the business side for many, many years. It's also a mission driven field, as you can imagine. And so I was involved in setting up clinics and hospitals in Asia, eventually investing in life sciences, including biotech and medical devices. But all that long, especially when in Asia I was working in nonprofits as well. So working in areas that I was interested in and also had a passion for. So I worked in health care, worked in education, worked in sports, in conservation, all things that were near and dear to my heart. It's really with the attacks against our community recently that I've decided now is the time to really give back and be more involved in my community. So I applied all my business experience and my passion for all these causes now to TAAF, and it's been, as you said, really rewarding, really meaningful, to really try to leave a better future for future generations. That's, that's been our commitment. And thanks to our incredible board and support of all of our donors and a great team, we have about 30 people around the country who have just been so passionate and so committed to this cause. You know, we're making progress. You know, we're in our second year of operation and really now starting to see the momentum building and more and more awareness of these issues and more and more willingness for people to collaborate with TAAF. And we're very excited about the next few years.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:40] Excellent. That's a great story. I love it. I love that you basically have been in this fight for some time, essentially just in different forms, and that now you're doing TAAF and it's the perfect time for you. So as an everyday person, what are two things we could be doing to support a sense of belonging for everybody, but specifically for Asian Americans?
Norman Chen: [00:34:01] I think a wonderful way to start off is to learn more about Asian American Pacific Islander history and culture. You know, a lot of us don't have the opportunity to have grown up in Asia or to have learned about AAPI history and culture. And so for me, one of the first things I did was to read up about this and learn from experts. And so one book I always recommend is Asian American Dreams by Helen Zia. It's a wonderful overview of American, Asian American Pacific Islander history in the US. From a personal perspective, she was very involved in the Vincent Chin case in Detroit, and so just her advocacy and her leadership has been powerful. Erika Lee is also an incredible author and historian, so I also recommend her books. So education, personal education and knowledge is, to me, what the first thing you can do. And there's a wonderful list of AAPI nonfiction resources that you can go to. That's the first thing. The second thing I recommend is look at what each of us brings to the table -- our passions, our interests, our skills -- and look for the intersections then with the Asian American community. So food, sports, movies, books, you know, learn more about Asian American areas that are tied to those. You know, everyone likes Asian American food. Well, how do you learn more about different kinds of Asian American food? Write music. There's a group called 88 Rising that's doing incredible work to promote Asian American artists in the US. And so they have two concerts right now that are national concerts in New York and in LA, where literally 20, 30,000 people come and listen to AAPI and Asian generated music. That's super exciting. So once you become more aware about AAPI culture and interests, then I would dive into those areas that you're most keen on and learn more. It's fascinating and you'll find it incredibly rewarding.
Mila Atmos: [00:35:53] Excellent. I will state for the record that I went to an 88 Rising concert, Head in the Clouds, at Forest Hills Stadium. I took the train out there and back.
Norman Chen: [00:36:01] Good for you.
[00:36:02] It was amazing. And it was -- you know, like I said, outside of San Francisco, it always feels like I am one of very few Asians in a crowd. But at this stadium, I think there were maybe three non-Asians and everybody else was Asian. I was like, Wow, this is really amazing. I have not experienced this here in the US ever before.
Norman Chen: [00:36:21] And what's the sense of belonging you felt being at that event?
Mila Atmos: [00:36:23] Oh, it was almost like a tearjerker for me because, you know, having lived here for a long time now, I feel like so often... You feel alone.
Norman Chen: [00:36:31] Wonderful. I'm glad you went.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:32] So here's my last question. Looking into the future, what makes
you hopeful?
Norman Chen: [00:36:39] Yeah, I'm very hopeful. Because of our youth, I really feel like they have a different perspective from the older generations. They're very open to people of different backgrounds and different cultures. In fact, they seem to celebrate that, whereas older generations seem to cling to those that they're mostly associated with or most identify with. So I love that openness and that adventurous spirit among the younger generation. We've learned that older people see AAPIs as more white adjacent, whereas younger people see Asian-Americans as more community of color. So having our own identity, which is separate from the white community, and to me that speaks powerfully to this greater sense of our own identity, ownership of our own identity. And so that gives me a lot of hope as well. Plus, you know, the future is social media, and the youth are so adept at using social media to build community to communicate. So we are looking to do more with the AAPI community, the youth addressing issues like mental health, which is a problem for all of our society, but especially an issue for AAPI youth, right. AAPI youth right now between the ages of 10 to 24, our leading cause of death is suicide. And so this is something in which we're unique among all the racial groups in this country. For all that we have to celebrate, there are still a lot of issues like we touched upon about identity and belonging, and we need to work more on. But from that, we can build a stronger foundation so that we can
again thrive and prosper more in the future. So we see the youth group as a key demographic for us to do more in, but also one that has incredible potential.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:19] I think the most exciting thing that you said there just now was how differently AAPI youth thinks of themselves views themselves as not white adjacent. I think that's incredibly important and that makes me hopeful, too. Thank you very much for joining us on future hindsight, Norman, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
Norman Chen: [00:38:38] Thank you for having me, Mila. Really enjoyed our conversation.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:41] Norman Chen is the CEO of the Asian-American Foundation.
Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, an organization that uses the law to build collective power and advance a bold, vibrant democracy for all people.
Skye Perryman: [00:39:06] So when we say the courts are a frontline in this battle for democracy, one of the things we mean is this is a place where anti-democratic actors are going to try to pull back rights, to try to reinterpret the Constitution, to try to take things that are settled for all people in this country and put them up for grabs. This is highly concerning. And it's a place where people and communities need to be able to have representation to ensure that the law is interpreted appropriately and that the courts are not misused, that they're used as an instrument of justice; and not misused.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:40] That's next time on Future Hindsight.
Have you checked us out on Instagram yet? We've got a bunch more tips to help you build your civic action tool kit. Follow us on Instagram @FutureHindsightPod to get special updates, episode clips, and everything in between. This episode was produced by Zack Travis and me. Until next time, stay engaged.
The Democracy Group: [00:40:15] This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.