What was the political import of removing the hyphen from Asian American?
Feng: Ah. Well, not everybody agrees on that. Grammatically some people will insist on putting it in if it’s modifying a noun like “Asian-American film” or something like that, but this is one of those things where I prefer not to have the hyphen; but, it’s not something worth going to the mat over. Basically, from a strictly grammatical standpoint, “Asian-American” (with a hyphen) makes both those words nouns. “Asian” is a noun and “American” is a noun. “Asian American” (without a hyphen) says “Asian” is an adjective and “American” is a noun. Because of the history of Asian Americans being recognized or perceived as foreigners, to be called “Asian-American” was to say: “You are two things at the same time.” This was, of course, what led to the internment of Japanese Americans in California during WWII in the sense that, “You’re not really an American; your loyalty is divided.” That’s one of the reasons why—at the time—some Japanese Americans preferred to use the term, “I’m an American
