Connecting The Past And The Present: Harvey Dong’s Insights On The Allegations Against Richard Aoki

By Guest Contributor Tala Khanmalek

L-R: Richard Aoki, Charlie Brown of the Afro American Student Union and Manuel Delgado of the Mexican American Student Confederation, March 1969. Photo: Muhammad Speaks via San Francisco Bayview.

On September 6, 2012 I interviewed Harvey Dong, a veteran of the Third World Liberation Front and Asian American Political Alliance at the University of California-Berkeley, where he is a professor in the school’s Department of Ethnic Studies. As our conversation progressed, I noticed the American and California flags waving through the window, and that’s when the irony of our personal and political complexities hit me.

However, Dong’s timely insights about the allegations against fellow veteran Richard Aoki connected the past and the present to clarify our positions in critical ways that also provide tools for the future of social justice scholarship and activism.

Tala Khanmalek: I was re-reading Richard Aoki’s speech notes from the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) Founding Rally (July 28, 1968) in “Stand Up: An Archive Collection of the Bay Area Asian American Movement, 1968-1974″ and remembering what I think is one of the most important things about Aoki’s legacy: his comparative analysis of racialization as well as his centralization of interracial solidarity. Is there a relationship between Aoki’s politics and Seth Rosenfeld’s claim that he was an FBI informant?

Harvey Dong: Definitely. His politics is internationalism, and he’s a symbol of Afro-Asian unity. A lot of times when people talk about peoples of color and examples from history, examples from the past, Richard’s name is always mentioned because he was someone that bridged two or three different worlds. There’s a lot of support for Richard’s life and what it represented. So, in a lot of ways I kind of felt it was an attack on his legacy in terms of what he contributed and what he had represented.

In terms of the author, Seth Rosenfeld, was this something that he had misread, did sloppy work and, from there, set off a hailstorm? That’s possible. One person’s sloppy academic research…I mean, that’s possible, too, that there was a misreading and bad analysis, bad historical research and documentation on Seth Rosenfeld’s part, which is actually what a lot of the academics in the Chronicle of Higher Education who were interviewed for that essay were saying. But one thing though that made me kind of angry about Rosenfeld was that he seemed to have a certain conspiracy theory in his mind, to the point where any bits and pieces that he could pull together he would use to draw his own conclusions. He doesn’t seem to be that thorough.

TK: Some have argued that Rosenfeld’s claim was meant to promote the sale of his book. Is there also a relationship between the allegation and the current political moment? For example, the social justice activism in Oakland that pre-dated the Occupy movement, namely movements for Oscar Grant. While refuting the allegation is necessary, situating it in the present so that strategic connections become visible is necessary, too.

HD: I mean it would align with all these things that are going on. Oakland is a big mess, and there’s a need for political direction and leadership. So people always look at, well, what can we draw on? You know, what type of solidarities are needed, and Richard and the legacy of the Panthers. They had this idea of the rainbow, or different races of people coming together, as opposed to cultural nationalism where everybody just sticks to themselves. Those are things that were very positive from the 60s and 70s, that can be drawn on, and which Richard Aoki represented.

Page 1 of 5 | Next page