AANHPI Heritage Month

Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month

For generations, the lie of rejection has been deeply rooted in the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander (AANHPI) community. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States. The Watsonville riots in the 1930s resulted in California prohibiting interracial marriage and explicitly forbade Filipino men from marrying white women. In April 1942, the first group of 82 Japanese Americans were forced to leave their homes and businesses and live at Manzanar, an internment camp and by 1945 over 120,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned in multiple camps across the west coast. Fast forward to the L.A. Riots of 1992, where raised tensions and violence continued to escalate between Korean and Black communities. By 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a sharp increase in harassment and violence against the AANHPI community.

If not othered, the AANHPI community lived under false assumptions and stereotypes of the “model minority myth.” The Learning For Justice Organization explains, “This myth characterizes Asian Americans as a polite, law-abiding group who have achieved a higher level of success than the general population through some combination of innate talent and pull-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps immigrant striving.” This contributes to the lies they don’t belong–they feel rejected, insignificant, and unworthy, and for one to belong, one must earn it.

But the truth is you are accepted, significant, worthy, and above all, loved. In God’s Kingdom, we don’t earn our belonging. With God, belonging isn’t mere affection, camaraderie, or membership in the same club. It is much more. God’s son, Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, paid the price for our belonging when He was nailed on the cross. That’s why Paul tells us we are “not [our] own” in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. God loves us so much that He rescued us from the hold of anything else that promises to satisfy us, but won’t. Instead, He made us belong to Him alone.

With our identities rooted in God’s truth, may we fully know and believe that we belong. We are all ministers of belonging, with joy as our weapon against the generations of oppression, fear, pain, and whatever may try to come against us today—joy is our resistance!

Happy Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month!

Champion and come alongside the AANHPI community through allyship and understanding. We urge you to take action and dive into these resources below: books, articles, podcasts, movies, and more.