I'm also laughing my ass off at people that are implying that other minority groups have protested for Asian rights in the past more than we have for others. Did I miss the Black Caucus voting against internment or something? What about the Chinese Exclusion Act? Were there only protests from minorities at that time, or was it pretty uniformly treated?
It's not like there aren't any Asian American activists now that protest for BLM and other movements. Shit, my facebook is 95% Asian American and during Ferguson, and even now, there were tons of supporters speaking out and talking.
There ARE Asian Americans that bring this up. There's no united Asian American voice yet, and if you wanna dismiss that or think it's stupid, then you'll never fucking see what Asian Americans do or say because you are blind to the individual efforts and yet broadly accuse "Asian Americans" of not supporting other minorities, despite the fact that we do. There's 5% of us, for fuck's sake. Sometimes there's only five of us for every hundred people, so it can be hard to see.
If you want to generalize all Asian Americans as apathetic to the plight of other minorities, that's your call. I don't really care, I'll keep on supporting what I do regardless of what y'all say. But, you can not do that and then, at the same time, reject the need for one panAsian American movement... because you've already put all of us together in one group.
& yeah, I'd still like to see a panAsian voice first, but it's not going to form around some other minority's problems. That just not how it works. People are selfish and form THEIR groups first. The Black Panthers didn't get together because the Native Americans were being persecuted. It's gotta happen with an Asian issue first.
IMHO first South Asians and East Asians and Southeast Asians have to work together (though I suspect that any panAsian group would fracture this into two groups) to form a more-or-less united front (or at least a group with enough "power" to have any influence), before we can even think of putting our voices together in a meaningful way.
*edit: it's worth addressing WHY there's a lack of Asian activists. First of all, you can rule out old people and new immigrants.
Of the young kids remaining, why don't they speak out? Some are very privileged, and like other privileged folk that live in a bubble, don't see what is going on.
Others have been raised to not stick out. The nail that sticks out gets hammered back in. The chicken that sticks its head out gets it chopped off.
Still others may be racist. There might be some that don't want to be grouped in with other minorities, that want to Uncle Chan that tomfoolery up and lick the white man's boot and be "one of the good ones." There are some that straight up dislike other races.
Any, all, some, etc of these are factors that might influence the numbers (I don't even know what they are, but a poll/study would be nice on the % of activism done by ethnic group and race). There might be more factors.
The solution is not to say, suck it up y'all "should" be acting like "this way" because I said so.
Don't disregard circumstance and societal influences so easily. It may very well be turned on you, in the form of "well why can't <x minority> just get their shit together like <y minority>." Getting your shit together can be anything you want it to be. Protests. Activism. Academic achievement. Etc.
