Sewing Asian American Futures

Asian Americans today have the highest college attainment rate, median family income, and rate of working in a high skill occupation. Some say Asians do not experience any discrimination in America because they are doing so well. This was not always the case. Lisa Lowe examines the times of the 19^th and early 20^th century where Asian American immigrants were treated with incredible discrimination and economic hardship in her article, Work, Immigration, Gender: New Subjects of Cultural Politics. Asian Americans today have come a long way from the disparity they faced when their ancestors first arrived here. Lowe focuses on the conditions female Asian workers lived with in this time period. When addressing Asian seamstresses, “In the San Francisco Bay Area garment industry, women sew clothing that their meager wages, when they receive them, will not permit them to buy as commodities.”(32) Female Asian workers were a labor forced heavily exploited. They were paid dismal wages and Lowe mentions many accounts of managers harassing them or not paying them at all. I find it incredible thinking about how workers could not afford the standard clothing they were producing. The AIWA (Asian Immigrant Women Advocates) was formed to help with these conditions.

These immigrants were seeking better lives in America. “The expansion that led to U.S colonialism and war in the Philippines, Korea, and Vietnam violently displaced immigrants from those nations: the aftermath of the repressed history of U.S. imperialism in Asia now materializes in the ‘return’ of Asian immigrants to the imperial center".(35) The influx of workers and need of jobs allowed employers to exploit this new labor force. America needed immigrants such as these or Latinos to fill service jobs necessary but undesirable. This stands true today somewhat.

Associations like AIWA were able to improve Asian working conditions in the long run. This once occupational ghettoized work force is now the most prestigious and accomplished in America today.