Historian James Ikeda urges global-history view of Asian American past at Lacey Museum talk

James Chiyoki Ikeda, a Japanese American educator and PhD candidate at Northeastern University, urged audiences at the Lacey Museum’s May History Talks to reframe Asian American history as a product of empire and global migration rather than primarily an assimilation story.

Ikeda began by proposing a revision of his lecture title, saying, “The Origins of Asian America — towards a global history of empire and migration,” and asking attendees to place immigration to the United States in the broader context of colonization, imperial rivalry and transnational labor flows.

The lecture challenged a common assimilationist narrative that treats Asian American history as a sequence in which immigrants arrive, face discrimination, then gradually assimilate. “The assimilationist story…tends to collapse all people of color and immigrants into a single undifferentiated mass of victims of discrimination turned loyal American citizens,” Ikeda said. He recommended supplementing that view with questions about foreign…