New Racecar Report in honor of my birthday today! I’m a couple of chapters into The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority, by Ellen D. Wu. Ever wondered why the infamously racist Chinese Exclusion Act was finally repealed in 1943, aka less than 30 years before I was born, at the same historical moment when we were infamously and racist-ly incarcerating Japanese-American citizens during WWII? Basically the same reason why the Cold War helped drive federal civil rights policy in the 1950s and 60s, as I’m trying to summarize in this video.

Changing our racist laws doesn’t just happen because white people see the error of our ways and become “better.” Sometimes laws change partly for pragmatic reasons, leaving the underlying attitudes, biases and behaviors of the power structure sadly untouched. Hope this hidden history is as interesting and important to you as it is to me. Here’s to seeing clearly in 2020 so we can make deep changes, my dears!