Karen Narasaki
| Karen K. Narasaki | |
|---|---|
| Commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights |
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Assumed office July 25, 2014 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
April 4, 1958 Seattle, Washington, United States |
| Nationality | American |
Karen K. Narasaki is an American civil rights leader and human rights activist. In July 2014 President Barack Obama appointed Narasaki to serve as a Commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights. She is the former president and executive director of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC. Advancing Justice | AAJC is a Washington, D.C.-based, nonprofit civil rights organization whose mission is to advance the human and civil rights of Asian Pacific Americans through advocacy, public policy, public education and litigation. Prior to her post at AAJC, she served as the Washington, D.C. representative to the Japanese American Citizens League.
Narasaki was born in Seattle, Washington. She is the twin sister of playwright and actor Ken Narasaki. She became interested in civil rights when at age eight she accidentally overheard the pained voices of her parents discussing where their family would live next. Seattle was no longer an option. Although her father was a second generation Japanese American, served in the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team of the U.S. Army, the all-Japanese American unit that fought in Europe during World War II, and an engineer at Boeing, the possibility of buying his family a house in Seattle was out of the question due to racial covenants at the time. After graduating from Yale University and UCLA law school, Narasaki worked as a corporate attorney at Perkins Coie. While at the firm, Narasaki moonlighted as a civil rights activist at Asian American and women’s rights groups.
In 1986, Narasaki said goodbye to corporate America to enter the nonprofit sector as an advocate for human and civil rights. She has a long history of civil rights activism. Under Narasaki’s leadership, AAJC - which is affiliated with the Asian American Institute in Chicago, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles, and the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco - led the passage of the reauthorizations of key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In doing so, AAJC helped unite African American, Latino, Native American and other stakeholders to identify the necessary research, while organizing testimony, training organizers and educating the public about the continuing existence of discriminatory barriers and behavior in voting.
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