Resilient Panda Origin Story Part 2 - Why the Name “Resilient Panda”?

When we were thinking of a name for this website, we wanted something that would capture the creativity, innovation, persistence and determination of Asian Americans.  Something that would show resilient they are.  By brainstorming we came up with “Resilient Panda”, as this iconic animal lives in China, but its historic range included Burma and Vietnam. This was good because we want to be clear we are not just about East Asian American history.   We plan to include South and Southeast Asian Americans, as well as Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians.  (My son also suggested “Resilient Dragon” which I also liked, but I changed it to “Resilient Dragons” and then it was too reminiscent of the band Imagine Dragons.)  When I googled “resilient panda”, a fascinating article came up.  “Why Giant Pandas Are Unusually Resilient” from The Christian Science Monitor*.   Research in China showed wild giant pandas have surprising genetic diversity, which gives the population a better ability to adapt to challenges such as disease or habitat destruction.  In other words, their diversity makes them more resilient.  Diversity means they have more tools in their toolkit to cope with change. 

This is part of the reason we are pursuing diverse educational, linguistic, travel, and cultural experiences for our children, to increase their resilience by helping them have diverse ways of looking at situations.  In his 1867 “Composite Nation” speech, Frederick Douglass argued this is America’s great and unique strength, her diversity.  It positions her to innovate in ways a very homogeneous nation would not.   Even St. Paul wrote to the Christians in ancient Greece that their diversity was a strength, in fact a necessity.  “If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?....The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’” (1 Corinthians 12:17, 21. English Standard Version)

As if that wasn’t enough to cement the name Resilient Panda for us, as I continued reading the study on giant pandas, a quote jumped out at me - “The assumption is that a decrease in genetic variation [diversity] and a lack of exchange between isolated populations increase the likelihood of extinction by reducing the population’s ability to adapt to changing environments”.  In other words, a lack of exchange between isolated populations is bad for everyone.  Contact with other populations introduces some of the diversity needed to cope with challenges.   This is one of the key problems we believe a diverse education addresses.  When one group of people doesn’t have any contact with other different groups of people, it is easy for misinformation, stereotypes and imagination to take over.  In the same speech Frederick Douglass said “Men only know themselves by knowing others, and contact is essential to this knowledge. [emphasis added]”   When we have contact with other, whether it is from knowing each other directly or even reading books and viewing media with a variety of backgrounds and perspectives, then we have the exchange we need to actually know each other.  This contact and knowledge gives us more tools in the toolkits we use to understand and solve problems.  This is how diversity produces resilience.

 We need this exchange, we need to know our fellow Americans.  We need to know that Asian Americans, and every other type of Americans, are Americans.  We lost resiliency when we imprisoned Japanese Americans during WWII.  This is proven when we see how the Japanese Americans served in WWII once the US government allowed them to serve  Their unit, the 442nd Infantry Regiment, is the most decorated unit in US military history.  We also lost resiliency when the US excluded most Chinese from immigrating from 1882-1943. (Chinese exclusion laws were what Douglass was arguing against in his Composite Nation speech.)  Like the giant pandas, we are a more resilient population when we have more diversity, more exchange, and less isolation between different groups.  

We hope to foster exchange and diversity with our guide Streams: Chinese American History for Kids.  Sign up for our newsletter to be notified when it is ready for PDF download.  Watch for the cover art reveal in our next newsletter!

Thank you for reading,

Essie Wu

FALL 2023 UPDATE - Streams: Chinese American History for Kids is now ready for download in our shop! You can also download a sample here!

*Poppick, L. (2013, October 23). Why Giant Pandas are Unusually Resilient. The Christian Science Monitor. https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/1023/Why-giant-pandas-are-unusually-resilient