An Asian American Thanksgiving
By wchung | 22 Apr, 2026

We have so much to be thankful for it's easy to forget whom to thank.

Chinese railroad workers proved their ability to handle the grueling work of laying track and eventually made up over 90% of Central Pacific workers.

We have a long weekend to stuff ourselves and sit back with full bellies and pick our teeth reflecting on the things we have to be thankful for. That’s good because we Asian Americans have more reasons to be grateful than most.

The lives we enjoy make it easy to forget the price paid to win our seat at the American table. A special Thanksgiving gratitude should go to all those Asian Americans who came before us and bore the brunt of the intense and often deadly pressure of two continents making contact after ten thousand years of separation.

During the past century and a half Chinese miners and railroad laborers, Filipino farm workers, West Coast Japanese, Korean inner-city merchants, Vietnamese fishermen and countless others have been scapegoats for American workers befuddled by their own difficulties adjusting to a globalizing world. Even today we suffer racial hostility from those who perceive us to be newcomers taking the educations, jobs and affluence to which they feel superior entitlement for no more reason than those conjured by their prejudices.

As we deal with the annoyances, hostility and obstacles it helps to remember that by overcoming them and prospering despite them we’re making life easier for our children and all the other Asian Americans who will follow us. Our tribulations may not be on the brutal scale of those suffered by some in the last century but they are every bit as real. I would venture to say that more people are killed or maimed or have lives ruined by the explosive rage fueled by years of petty hostility than by direct hand-to-hand combat.

Our big fight is against the angering stupidity of stereotypes, the injuries caused by racial insults, the injustices suffered at the hands of those who let their closely-held racial biases dictate the outcomes of official or business decisions. Our best weapon in that fight is to invoke the long golden line of those who have fought bravely and won our rightful place on this continent.

11/24/2009 10:04 AM