Ling-chi Wang, pictured in 2006, helped teach the first Asian American studies class at UC Berkeley. The longtime professor is lending his name to an endowment campaign for the Asian American Research Center.

May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, which, surprisingly, hasn’t been canceled by President Donald Trump’s anti-diversity campaign. At least not yet. 

Some argue these celebratory months are not needed or that they are even racist for singling out “immutable characteristics” of some groups.

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But we still need events like Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month as a reminder that, though there have been great strides, how our country grapples with race is a work in progress. The spike in anti-Asian hate when the pandemic hit six years ago was a painful reminder that deep-seated racism isn’t far from the surface.

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“Racism is just rampant, and it runs in great depth into the soul, into our society," Ling-chi Wang, a professor emeritus of Asian American studies at UC Berkeley, told me. "Try as we may to do all kinds of things possible to do what Malcolm X said, to eliminate racism by any means necessary" it remains.

Througout a career that has mixed academia and........

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