Letâs Hear What High Schoolers Think
The winners of our student letter-writing competition offer opinions about anti-Asian bias, police brutality, financial literacy, meatless meat and more.
May 8, 2021, 11:00 a.m. ET
  Credit...Rafal Milach/Magnum Photos
To the Editor:
As an Asian-American, I applaud the Senateâs swift, bipartisan passage of the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act. The measure, however, constitutes a mere first step in the fight against anti-Asian violence. To further combat such bigotry, we must also promote Asian-American representation in education curriculums.
Teaching the Asian-American experience is imperative because U.S. history chroniclers often neglect it. In most textbooks, weâre invisible, relegated to a few short paragraphs, even footnotes. That erases our stories from the record, perpetuating ignorance and contributing to our mischaracterization as a monolithic âmodel minorityâ or foreign threat, thus allowing xenophobia and discrimination to take root.