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Exhibition Extols Achievements of Asian Americans

R S Shankar in San Diego

How many people in this cosmopolitan and heavily immigrant city know that the space lab Chandra is named after Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, a Nobel Prize winning scientist who is an Asian American, and who was born and raised in his native India? And how many would know that Hargobind Khorana, a Nobel laureate in medicine, was also born and raised in India?

And how many people here -- or across America -- know that Chang-lin Tien, a recent chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley is Chinese American?

Americans have heard the big names: Michelle Kwan, the figure skater; Michael Chang, the tennis wonder; Yo Yo Ma, the cellist, and March Fong Eu, the former California secretary of state, Deepak Chopra, the international best-selling writer of holistic books.

But how many people know that they have Asian roots?

An exhibition here sets to improve the perception about Asian Americans, which has been overshadowed recently by the scandalous Wen Ho Lee, a scientist accused of spying for China in the Los Alamos National Laboratory; and John Huang, the Democratic Party's chief fund-raiser for the Asian-American community in 1996, accused of channeling money from mainland China.

Not to forget Yogesh Gandhi, who claimed to be a descendant of the Mahatma and gave the Democratic Party over $ 300,000 in donations during Bill Clinton's second presidential campaign. A few months later the Democrats returned the tainted money to Gandhi, who was facing bankruptcy, when the party discovered (thanks to newspaper investigation) that the money was tainted and could have come from a controversial Japanese cult leader

Many Asian-Americans here say society is not getting the full picture. "Of Indians, either many people think they are very good at making fast money or they are saving all their money to send back to India," says Kirit Doshi, a businessman. "The taxes we pay, the investment we make here, and the long hours of work we put in is often not talked about."

"The bottomline is, Asian-Americans are not always recognized for their contributions," said Murray Lee, curator of Chinese-American history for the San Diego Chinese Historical Society. He is convinced that the museum exhibit detailing 150 years of Asian-American and Pacific Islander contributions will help counter negative images generated by recent scandals.

The traveling photographic display, Heading East: California's Asian Pacific Experience, was conceived a year ago by the California Asian Pacific American Experience Exhibit Committee to coincide with the sesquicentennial commemoration of California's statehood.

In San Diego, it will be at the Chinese Museum at 404 Third Avenue until the end of this month.

"The exhibit will raise public awareness that Asian-Americans are part of the mainstream and not perpetual foreigners," said Ling-chi Wang, chairman of the department of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley.

The campaign finance and espionage scandals have taken on a racial twist that makes many Asian-Americans feel that their ethnicity is synonymous with traitors or spies, Wang believes. And he is convinced that the negative stereotypes about one Asian community hurts everyone else from the continent.

"Picture yourself -- you have just got a Ph D in science and you are applying for a job, and these jobs all have defense contracts," Wang said. "Or maybe you just want to teach in the UC system, but your prospective employer is going to look at you and wonder, 'Is this guy a spy? Maybe it would be better to avoid trouble by not hiring him.'

"That's why I say we haven't made much progress."

But the fact that a major institution is putting up an exhibition which will eventually travel to other American cities is a sign of progress, Doshi feels.

Murray Lee agrees with Doshi.

"We have much to be proud of," Lee said. "People hear about the negative side of immigration, of people coming here in boats and getting arrested.

"But we didn't just come here to make our lives better. We made our communities better as well."

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