Cyborgian Model Minorities for Environmental Justice: East Asian American Stories from the 1991 National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit

Abstract

Despite the growing social consciousness of issues relating to environmental justice (EJ) and the abundance of literature in the disciplines of EJ studies and Asian American Studies, analysis of Asian American activism in the EJ movement remains sparse. This work uses oral history interviews with East Asian (Chinese and Japanese) Americans present at the 1991 National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, an event many attribute to starting the American EJ movement, to examine the role of East Asian Americans in said movement. East Asian Americans at the conference engaged in multiracial coalition building while leading the expansion of the EJ movement to include occupational health and also guided the movement from a national framework of EJ to an international one. Of the six people interviewed, four went on to further EJ at the grassroots level by creating the Asian Pacific Environmental Network and two went on to institutionalize the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) dedication to EJ at the national and the regional levels. I highlight the role of East Asian Americans in the EJ movement to dispel notions of (East) Asian American apoliticalness as perpetuated by the model minority myth. Based on their expansive understandings of EJ, which takes occupational hazards and international environmental injustices into account, I argue that East Asian Americans are an integral part of the American EJ movement and are uniquely positioned to expand the EPAs framework of EJ to adequately address environmental issues of the twenty-first century.