South SFV Today

Despite the significant contributions of Asians to American infrastructure and institutions, a recent study highlights their underrepresentation and negative portrayal in U.S. history textbooks. Co-authored by Stanford researchers, the study reveals that Asians and Asian Americans are seldom mentioned in these textbooks and, when they are, it is often in the context of war, casting them as enemies or outsiders.

Using artificial intelligence, researchers analyzed 30 prominent U.S. history textbooks used in California and Texas high schools, both major markets for textbook publishers. They found that only 1% of the references included Asians or Asian Americans, often correlated with negative verbs like attack and invade.

“There’s very little discussion about Asian Americans in these textbooks, which is especially surprising for states like California and Texas, which have a huge Asian American population,” stated Minju Choi, who co-led the study and is now at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. The study found that aggressive language predominates when describing Asians, comparing unfavorably to verbs associated with other ethnic groups.

“The disparity is shocking,” stated Patricia Bromley, an associate professor at Stanford. “The language is much more aggressive, more negative. The negative sentiment is higher for Asian groups relative to other social groups, in sentences related to war and in non-war contexts.”

Co-led by Lucy Li from UC Berkeley, with David Bamman also contributing, the study noted that over 45% of sentences mentioning Asians focused on conflict, a higher emphasis compared to other ethnic groups. Choi noted, “That focus obscures the social history of Asians and Asian Americans, the complicated history of migration and other transnational experiences.”

The study cited examples of notable Asian Americans overlooked in textbooks, including Wong Kim Ark and Yuri Kochiyama, discussing their roles in significant U.S. legal and civil rights contexts. Nearly two-thirds of textbook sentences mentioning Asian Americans included white historical figures but not the Asians themselves.

“Asians and Asian Americans are reduced to groups and treated quite monolithically,” Bromley said. The study also noted racial omissions, with Filipino Americans rarely mentioned except in the context of U.S. colonial history.

The research extends previous analyses of U.S. textbooks, examining population group representation, political movements, and climate change. Through natural language processing, the study highlighted disparities in depictions of Asians and Asian Americans between textbooks in California and Texas.

Researchers advocate for supplementing textbooks with inclusive materials to provide a more comprehensive view of Asian American history. They suggest using resources from the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education to enhance representation. Bromley sees the study as a discussion catalyst: “It can be a chance to point out the omissions and the language used, to reflect with students on the meaning and creation of narratives of American national identity.”

This research was initially published by Stanford Graduate School of Education.