IACA - Indiana Association of Chinese Americans

Echoes From The Heart

These are the final two essays by the 1998 Telamon's High School Scholarship Award recipients. We hope you enjoy reading them, as well as the third essay by Alfred Tsang on the importance of voting.

Silver Anniversary Challenge: What Do You Think IACA Can Do For Your Generation?

by Kelly Ann Chen

This organization helps teenagers recognize their heritage. In the midst of much stress and balancing life, heritage is blocked out. It should be the background of what our life is laid upon. We should recognize it, learn about it, and live it. That is what this organization gives to teens. It reminds us of who we are, and where we came from. IACA can continue to influence our generation to take pride in their heritage, and to believe in it. This will lead us to become more confident about what we can accomplish, leading us to become leaders in our communities.

When I am trying to balance my homework with my activities, everything becomes a blur. I try to get everything done, and go to bed. I do not think about who I really am. My life does not give me the time to think. However, when IACA sends out a letter about an upcoming activity, I grasp at that chance to have fun and envelop myself in my culture. Unfortunately, my weekend activities most often fall on the same day as one of these events. Even with that barrier, writing these essays allows me to concentrate on my heritage for a moment each day. Last year's essay allowed me to contemplate how my life was affected by my culture. I discussed it with my friends to see what they thought, but it all come back to me. I realized that I didn't have many friends that were Asian, and I was conforming to a different culture. I needed to find my culture again, and learn about it. IACA has allowed me to review my life, and see how my heritage fits into it. I found that my life does include my culture, and I could easily make it more prominent.

This organization allows for me and other teens to recognize who they are. It has allowed me to find who I am. From my actions to my opinions, all is reflected off of who I am. IACA exposed me to who I really am. I am more confident about who I am now than I have ever been. This is all due in part of this organization that has allowed me to participate in activities that let me be surrounded by my heritage and culture.

What Do You Think IACA Can Do for Your Generation?

by Dorothy Touponce

As Chinese Americans, we have a dual culture. While we receive our American culture through our society and surroundings, we must look elsewhere to learn about our Chinese heritage. I believe that through the IACA our generation can keep in touch with our Chinese culture. There are many ways in which the IACA helps to promote awareness of Chinese culture, It offers our generation so many opportunities to learn about and experience Chinese culture. Also, the IACA provides the opportunity for many young Chinese Americans of our generation to meet other Chinese Americans resulting in relationships and friendships unique to the Chinese culture.

Each year the IACA sponsors two booths at the Indianapolis International Festival. One of these booths serves Chinese food and the other is a booth with objects unique to the Chinese culture. In this booth there are Chinese instruments, Chinese shadow puppets, various Chinese toys and people who explain Chinese culture. Having helped at this booth before I must say that the experience was on the whole very fulfilling. I truly enjoyed explaining something about myself and my Chinese heritage to other people. Although we are familiar with the Chinese culture, explaining it to those to which it is foreign to helps make us all the more aware of it.

Each year the IACA holds the annual Chinese New Years party. During this party, we are fortunate enough to have a glimpse at the importance of the Chinese New Year. We see a small scale celebration of the largest Chinese holiday. This IACA Chinese New Year party ultimately educates our generation of the importance -and significance of the Chinese New Year, While promotion of our culture is a very important thing, I believe that the most important thing that the IACA does for our generation is to help us form friendships with those of the same culture. Because we are a minority it is not always easy to find those with the same cultural distinctions as ourselves. The IACA brings us all together to learn about our heritage, thus giving us a very good opportunity to meet new people and form friendships that will last a lifetime.

It is not always easy to be a minority, but the IACA helps our generation to be fully aware of our Chinese heritage. The IACA can help our generation be proud of our Chinese heritage by educating us about it. In addition to this education, the IACA can help us find friends with whom we can share the common bond of the Chinese culture. As Chinese-American being raised in America. it is very easy to become monopolized by our American culture which we are surrounded in but the IACA helps our generation to stay in touch with our Chinese culture as well.

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G O T V

My name is Alfred Tsang, also know as (a/k/a) Tsang Leung Sang. As a precinct committeeman and for many years, I register people to vote and remind people to vote on election days when we decide who should be elected to governmental positions.

There are places in the world where democracy doesn't exist. Many people risk and give their lives to have freedom and democracy. This country, the United States, began in armed rebellion against the oppressive English monarch. When the North American colonists declared themselves independent from the King, the organizers of the movement signed a Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 ending with these words "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." Indeed many of them lost their lives over the course of freedom. If you haven't read the Declaration of Independence lately, you will find it refreshing and inspiring.

Here are the words in the Preamble of the Constitution of State of Indiana: "To the end, that justice be established, public order maintained, and liberty perpetuated; WE, the People of the State of Indiana, grateful to ALMIGHTY GOD for the free exercise of the right to choose our own form of government, do ordain this Constitution."

For centuries afterwards, many Americans, citizens and non-citizens alike, risked and gave their lives to preserve the freedom and democracy. I was one of them. Many of my friends and comrades perished.

Freedom and equality didn't come easy. The best of societies is not perfect. A law passed in 1882 prohibiting the immigration of Chinese to entered into the United States was later extended and made permanent. Then it was repealed because China was a wartime ally of the United States. Even then a quota of only 105 Chinese, wherever they reside, were allowed each year.

My parents came to the United States under an exception in the exclusion law. So I was born in New York. The plain words in the 14th (Civil War) Amendment to the Constitution were simple enough. It states persons born in the United States are the citizens of the United States. The federal government decided differently. One of the strengths in the American law is if you disagree with the government, you may sue it in court. Wong Kim Ark and his lawyers sued. The United States Supreme in 1898 decided the government was wrong. I am the beneficiary of that court decision.

World War II came to the United States when I was seventeen. Months later I volunteered for the U. S. Army knowing my Confucian mother would be ashamed of me if I allowed other mothers' sons bearing my share of the responsibility. I needed my father's consent to join and later to volunteer for flight training. In time of war there was equal opportunity. At the age of twenty I became a commissioned officer. My father's consent was not needed when I volunteered for combat service. Parental consent was not necessary although I was not old enough to vote.

My father frequently talked about American politics and government. After the war and after I became eligible to vote, I urged him to become naturalized so that he could vote. He listened but did nothing. It dawned on me after his death that he was not eligible to be naturalized. He didn't whimper when I asked to give consent to my risk taking, and endured humiliation in silence. He didn't want to dampen my enthusiasm for America. It has taken generations of struggles for the ethnic Chinese to be treated fairly and equally with people from other lands under the law. Democracy cannot be self perpetuated. You also know prejudice exists because of our ethnicity.

We now have a government that is not elected by the majority of people who are eligible to vote. The neglect is shameful and irresponsible. If we want the ethnic Chinese to be taken seriously by the mainstream, we need to be known that we take our citizenship seriously. Therefore I am asking you to register to vote if you have not done so. If you are registered and have since change your address, you need to submit another registration. And if you have not been naturalized as a citizen of the United States, start the naturalization process right now, or whenever you become eligible.

Finally, you want people to know you are serious about voting. Ask your acquaintances and colleague, whatever their ethnicity, if they have already registered to vote. If the answer is "no" then offer that person a voter registration form. [Note: before you do that, you should have a supply of the forms. You can get them at a public library or at the Motor Vehicles Bureau branch]. Ask each person privately. Voting is a serious business, and people of good will will not be offended by your inquiry. You will gain their respect because you are serious about citizenship.

GOTV is the abbreviation for the slogan "get out the vote." My message to you is "Get out to vote."

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. My phone number is (317) 845-4430

Alfred Tsang

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