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Dr. Lyman advocates Asian American rights

Internationally known scholar Dr. Stanford Morris Lyman featured the struggle for civil rights of Asian American immigrants in his lecture yesterday, which was sponsored by the International Studies Institute. / photo by Melissa A. Collett
Internationally known scholar Dr. Stanford Morris Lyman featured the struggle for civil rights of Asian American immigrants in his lecture yesterday, which was sponsored by the International Studies Institute. / photo by Melissa A. Collett

by Christie Reed
Staff Writer

Dr. Stanford Morris Lyman, professor of social science at Florida Atlantic University and a leading authority on Asian Americans in the United States, confronted an issue yesterday that has been tossed back and forth in the U.S. court system—“The Asian American Quest for Civil Rights.”

In his speech, Dr. Lyman answered the pending question—”What guidelines define citizenship?”—by examining the court cases that defined the problem.

“Asian rights are a very important quest, although it is not very publicly or scholarly known,”said Lyman.

As documented through court cases dating back to 1854 and continuing to date, Asian Americans still do not know where they stand as Americans.

With Supreme Court justifications such as “Chinese should be generically defined as Indians through ancestry,” and “All persons who are not white are considered to be black and ineligible for U.S. citizenship,” Asians were prevented time and time again from testifying in court and becoming U.S. citizens. In 1922, the Japanese were labeled as a yellow-brown race.

Even in the mid 1900s, when Chinese citizenship was allowed, other groups were still labeled as “Alien ineligible to U.S. citizenship,” such as Hawaiians, Burmese, Indians, Jap­a­nese and Koreans.

Dr. Lyman went on to say that even after the government extended its definition of “white” to Hindus and other Asian groups, “State and local governments passed laws restricting jobs and other activities to those deemed non-eligible.”

He outlined an alien land law that was structured to drive out Japanese farmers. After World War II, the Supreme Court case Oyama vs. California denied a Japanese father and son their rightful land claims.

The audience in La Fetra Auditorium laughed with Lyman as he made a mockery of court decisions against Asians.

“They [the court] went so far as to define the word white at one point, as all those of North American heritage, to show the issue of anthropological inheritance irrelevant,” said Dr. Lyman, with his fists clenched and a look of grinning disbelief.

“According to the stereotypes, Asian Americans have been quiet and passive [in their pursuit of rights], but like most stereotypes this is not true,” he said.

Although Dr. Lyman has read every single case challenging the U.S. Natural­ization Law, he added that today, “I have only scratched the surface of cases where Asians have sought repeal.”

“The U.S. has not integrated the Asian quest in our history books,” said Lyman. “We need to tell of everyone involved in America’s struggle to be ‘the beacon on the hill.’”

“We need to practice, not just preach, freedom for all,” said Dr. Lyman.

Christie Reed, Editor in Chief
Christie Reed
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Melissa A. Collett, Photography Editor
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