As an undergraduate student at the University of Southern California, the Reverend Dr. Joseph Cheah said that he would spend hours at the bookstore, reading about Asian American studies.
Dr. Joseph Cheah
“The whole notion of Asian American things like that, I've been interested in that for a long time,” Cheah said. “I would just stand there for hours, reading one book after another in Asian American studies. For the first time, I read somebody talking about me, and most of the books do not talk about me. ... This was the first time that people were actually talking about me and my background. I was fascinated by that."
Cheah proceeded to make Asian American studies part of his career, primarily focusing his scholarship on race and religion. He is currently chair and professor in the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at University of Saint Joseph Connecticut.
And recently, he released his latest book Anti-Asian Racism: Myths, Stereotypes, and Catholic Social Teachings, which highlights pervasive and destructive stereotypes that the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community faces: perpetual foreigner, Yellow Peril, and the myth of the model minority.
Cheah – who is Chinese-Burmese– said that the perpetual foreigner stereotype manifests itself in how people not of Asian ethnicity often ask where someone “was really from.”
“That means that people consider people from Asian ancestry as foreign,” Cheah said. “It doesn't matter how many years you're living here. It doesn't matter whether you're born here. It doesn't matter [that] your family came here generations ago. People are not satisfied with whatever answer we give them when they ask us, 'Where are you from?' They are expecting an Asian name, Asian country. They already pegged you down as a foreigner. You don't look like an American.”
He said that racist fears of Yellow Peril currently relate to the COVID-19 pandemic, during which anti-Asian sentiment and incidents have seen increases.
