Because of our shaky American history of accepting Asians into our country, Asian Americans have formed in solidarity. Because of incidents that clearly shunned the Asian American community, there was a huge result of the formation of numerous Asian American community organizations. These organizations were created in response to how Asian Americans were treated and to mobilize the action that should be taken against such cruelty.
The Asian American community and their organizations have documented numerous incidents of hate crimes that have occurred on American soil.
More recent crimes in the Asian American community further symbolize how authorities can be so insensitive to the needs of Asian American citizens. Asian American citizen Wen Ho Lee was working as a research scientist at a Nuclear Laboratory in military missile systems. In 1999 during the midst of national hysteria about nuclear secrets being passed along to China, Dr. Lee was accused of 59 separate counts of mishandling classified information.
Sure, authorities were obviously profiling, but once Dr. Lee was brought to the American court, the judge refused bail, Dr. Lee was kept in solitary confinement, and was forced to wear leg shackles and chains for nine months. All the while Dr. Lee was never charged with espionage, just mishandling classified information. While Dr. Lee was imprisoned the Asian American community was outraged. They protested, and the petitioned the American government to lessen Dr. Lee's punishment.
Just before Dr. Lee was supposed to appear before trial, the American Government dropped all charges held against him.
It turns out that an FBI official fabricated a lot of the story to authorities and provided false testimony in the initial investigation. Dr. Lee was released and the presiding judge commented: "I sincerely apologize to you, Doctor Lee, for the unfair manner in which you were help in custody by the executive branch. They have embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it."
Even the renowned American newspaper; the New York Times issued a formal apology to its readers for the defamation of Dr. Lee. They claimed that they had not done enough research to find the true facts. They also issued a formal apology to the Asian American community as a whole. Never has an Asian American citizen been treated so badly as to have been wrongly accused and put in jail for crimes he did not commit.
The Asian American community was outraged by the event and how Dr. Lee was treated. The Asian American Community claimed that Dr. Lee's case was just another example of government-sanctioned racial profiling.
The problem was over exaggerated because of his racial identity. Sadly, this one case just falls into the pattern of the many other cases that have all been brought against the Asian American community.
The stereotype that continues to plague the entire Asian American community is that because they all have common interests that may not coincide with the traditions of Americanism that they are innately not American. That obviously poses a threat to America as a nation because the country thinks that anything different should be considered a threat.