Challenge to Arcadia Sign Law Rebuffed : Discrimination: A Chinese residents group says efforts by an outside group to file a lawsuit against the English-language sign law could unleash more anti-Asian sentiment.

An influential Chinese residents group, wary of anti-Asian sentiment and put off by the political confrontations that once characterized Monterey Park, has rebuffed outside activists who want to challenge the English-language sign law here.

“We don’t want Arcadia to become a third Chinese business town,” said Dr. Sheng Chang, referring to Monterey Park and Los Angeles’ Chinatown. If the English-language “sign law didn’t exist, it may well happen,” Chang said.

“We want to be a quiet bedroom community,” added Chang, a family physician who is chairman of the Arcadia Chinese Assn., a group of 2,000 residents.

Despite such sentiments, officials of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles want to file a lawsuit and are seeking a plaintiff from Arcadia.

Chang and other leaders of the Chinese community have refused to assist the center and have rallied in support of the city. They say a sign-law controversy could hurt them more than it would help by unleashing a fury of anti-Asian sentiment in this predominantly white upper-middle-class city. Asian residents make up about 22% of the population of 48,000 and about 39% of the public school students.

The Arcadia Chinese community’s stance is in stark contrast that of the Monterey Park Chinese community. In that city, there was a long controversy over an English-sign law that passed in 1985 as city leaders and longtime residents were complaining about the rapid growth of the city’s Asian population.

The Monterey Park City Council in 1986 wanted to pass a more restrictive law requiring that three-quarters of a sign be in English, but Asian activists staged demonstrations and engaged council members in heated debate over the issue, at one point threatening to sue, until the council passed a compromise measure in 1989. Now the law requires only that enough English be used to give an establishment’s name or business purpose. In Arcadia, however, the city’s sign law requires that two-thirds of each business sign be in Roman characters. Legal Center attorneys believe that it could be successfully challenged because a less-stringent Pomona law was struck down in 1989. A federal judge said the Pomona law discriminated on the basis of national origin and restricted free speech.

However, the Arcadia City Council last month decided that even with the risk of a potential lawsuit, it would not repeal the law.

Arcadia Chinese Assn. members say that by threatening legal action, the Los Angeles activists are being insensitive to the need for harmony between Asians and whites at a time when reports of hate crimes in the city have rattled nerves in the Chinese community.

Seven anti-Asian hate crimes--including two cross burnings--have been reported in Arcadia since October, 1989.

Repealing the sign law “would raise racial tension. It definitely would,” Chang said. “The local residents have been uneasy about this large influx of Taiwanese immigrants. We have built big houses, bought big houses, all those things. We essentially occupy 40% of the school.”

So, in addition to taking a non-confrontational stance on the sign law, Chinese Assn. leaders also have tried to reduce racial tension and misunderstanding in the community. They encourage Chinese parents to become active in the schools and social organizations. They sponsor high school dance parties, invite city officials to Chinese New Year events, even fly two school district officials to Taiwan each year for an 18-day all-expenses-paid cultural experience.

In many ways, it seems, their efforts have paid off.

“When we first moved into the community, nobody would talk to you. Everybody was kind of rude,” said Teresa Hsu, 42, the association’s vice president. “I decided: ‘If you don’t say “Hello” to me, it doesn’t matter. I’ll say “Hello” to you.’ I baked cakes, bring to them, tell them, ‘I’m your new neighbor.’

“Now I get along well with neighbors. When I go out of the country, they pick up my mail, feed the dog, water my lawn.”

Councilman Robert C. Harbicht said the anti-Asian crimes were isolated incidents, not representative of mainstream attitudes in the city. “Arcadia has had really an absolute minimum of anti-Asian sentiment given the numbers of Chinese moving in,” Harbicht said.

Harbicht argues that residents are “100% in favor of leaving the sign law the way it is. One of their objections to changing the law is that it could very likely change the appearance of Arcadia.”

And, he added, “there has clearly been an attempt by the Chinese community to reach out.”

Above all, members of the Chinese group say, they want to avoid repeating the experience of Monterey Park.

Interestingly, many own businesses in Monterey Park’s bustling Chinese commercial districts, where bold Chinese characters beckon locals and tourists from overseas with the names of restaurants, banks, immigration lawyers and churches.

These Arcadians flock to “suburban Chinatown” for business, shopping and eating out; but they choose Arcadia, with its quiet streets, more expensive homes and highly rated public schools, as the place to raise their families. And, like longtime residents of any bedroom community, they don’t want Arcadia to change too fast.

“Monterey Park is too crowded,” said Hsu, who owns a Chinese restaurant on Garvey Avenue in the city. “Every time I go there to the market to get my cooking stuff from the Chinese market, it makes me feel very nervous. It’s full of cars and people driving crazy. It’s easy for people to get mad at each other.”

Jimmy Au, president of the association, has worked hard to assimilate. He immigrated to the United States from Hong Kong 31 years ago and settled in Arcadia with his family 15 years ago. They opened a men’s clothing shop, Jimmy Au’s Tailors & Fashion, which now has three branches.

Au, 51, proudly noted that he is the first Asian board member of the Arcadia High School athletic booster club and that he is trying to get more Chinese involved in volunteer work. But his efforts will be for naught, he said, if the sign controversy tears the city apart.

“We don’t want to get into a lot of racial issues,” Au said. “We don’t see it as a racial issue,” he said of the sign law.

Nevertheless, there is an unconstitutional law on Arcadia’s books, Asian-American activists say.

“I understand them not wanting to rock the boat,” said lawyer Kathryn Imahara of the Legal Center. “They have worked hard to be accepted in a predominantly white community. They live there. I don’t want to belittle that. It’s just that if they want to live with an unconstitutional ordinance. . . . I don’t think that they understand quite where we’re at.”

Francis Hong and David Ma, two Monterey Park businessmen who led the fight against that city’s sign ordinance, were more critical.

“They think if they make friends with Caucasians, they’ll become a part of it,” Ma said. “It’s not so. I don’t think this will earn respect either. If it’s the right thing to fight for, even your enemy will respect you for that.”

“We fought,” Hong said. “A lot of people fought. The basic reason why we fought for it is exactly why we came to the U.S. Isn’t it?”

BACKGROUND

In the 1980s, several San Gabriel Valley cities, led by Monterey Park, adopted laws restricting the use of foreign characters on business signs. The laws came at a time when Asian immigrants were moving in large numbers to those cities, opening many businesses. In 1989, a federal judge declared unconstitutional a Pomona ordinance forbidding covering more than half a sign with foreign characters. Since then, Asian civil rights activists have pressured other cities to change or repeal their laws. Last July, Rosemead watered down its English sign ordinance, and Temple City suspended enforcement of its law. Arcadia, San Gabriel and San Marino also have sign laws.