Tien's encounters with racism did not end after he left the South. When he moved to Berkeley in 1959 to join the university's engineering faculty, Tien had a hard time finding a place to live: Even in a progressive place like Berkeley, Chinese weren't allowed in some desirable neighborhoods.
In 1992, after Tien had become chancellor, UC Berkeley's football team played in the Florida Citrus Bowl against Clemson University. An avid Cal sports fan who always cheered his football team from the sidelines, Tien took his customary seat at the game. When the crowd spotted him, chants of "Buy American!" and "U.S.A., U.S.A.!" erupted.
He was the head of a major university, a scientist who helped develop the heat-shielding tiles for the space shuttle, but all some rowdy college students could see was a stereotypical foreigner. The president of Clemson sent him a letter of apology after the game.
Last year, the Committee of 100, an organization of prominent Chinese Americans that Tien co-founded, commissioned a study of public attitudes toward Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans. It found that 25 percent of Americans held "very negative" views about Chinese Americans--among them, that Chinese Americans have too much power and influence, and are more loyal to China than to the United States. The study also found that more people would be uncomfortable voting for an Asian American for president (23 percent) than they would be for an African American (15 percent).
From his personal experience, Tien was keenly aware of the stereotypes and prejudice directed against Asian Americans. He believed that Asian Americans needed to fight back by speaking out. And speak out Tien did.
At a time when federal officials were calling Wen Ho Lee a threat to national security, Tien threw his support behind the former nuclear weapons scientist accused of spying for China. Tien and the scientist's other defenders maintained that Lee was innocent, and that he was being targeted because of his race. In the end Lee pleaded guilty to only one of the fifty-nine felony counts brought against him, and the federal judge in his case apologized to Lee, saying the government's actions had "embarrassed our entire nation."
Tien was also outspoken about the need for Asian American political empowerment. He co-founded the 80-20 Initiative, a grassroots movement to get 80 percent of Asian American voters to back one presidential candidate in the 2000 election. The idea was to show that the Asian American vote could be a force to be reckoned with if harnessed.
For a time, Tien himself was in the political spotlight, as a candidate for U.S. energy secretary. But the 1996 campaign finance scandal, with its politically damaging revelations of the illegal funneling of money from Asian donors to the Democratic Party, dashed his hopes. News reports disclosed that Indonesian businessman Mochtar Riady, one of the key players identified in the scandal, had requested Tien's help in getting three of his relatives admitted to Berkeley. Riady had legally donated $200,000 to the university; Tien was never accused of any wrongdoing. But with the controversy swirling, the Clinton administration saw Asian Americans as a political liability, and Tien never got the call.
The campaign finance issue has since subsided, and nowadays more Asian Americans are getting involved in politics. In the November 5 election, 102 Asian Pacific Americans won office on the state or national level, according to the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies. In Iowa, Michigan, and Minnesota, voters elected an Asian American to their state legislatures for the first time. For the past two years, Chinese American Elaine Chao and Japanese American Norm Mineta have both occupied posts in the cabinet of the current Republican administration.
As a nationally recognizable figure, Tien was able to accomplish a great deal to refute the image of Asian Americans as outsiders who aren't quite American. His death has left a great void, with no Asian American leader of similar stature championing the cause of racial justice in the passionate and outspoken way that Tien did. And that is a terrible shame, because much still has to be done. Times have changed since Tien stepped on that bus in Louisville, but Asian Americans are still caught in the middle, neither black nor white, invited to sit in the front yet at times treated as though they belonged in the back.
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