The racial triangulation of Asian Americans

Politics and Society

Volumn 27, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 105-138

  Kim, Claire Jean ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0033482673     PISSN: 00323292     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0032329299027001005     Document Type: Article

References (137)

1. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1994), 1. Note that while I capitalize Black and White throughout, I preserve outside quotes (which often use lowercase black and white) in their original form. Also, while I discuss Asian Americans generally and touch upon the experiences of Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and Korean Americans in particular, my arguments may be more or less applicable to the experiences of different Asian American subgroups.
2. David Theo Goldberg, Anatomy of Racism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), xiii.
3. Gary Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994); Mari Matsuda, "We Will Not Be Used," UCLA Asian American Pacific Islands Law Journal 1 (1993): 79-84; Tomás Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
4. Gary Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994); Mari Matsuda, "We Will Not Be Used," UCLA Asian American Pacific Islands Law Journal 1 (1993): 79-84; Tomás Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
5. Gary Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994); Mari Matsuda, "We Will Not Be Used," UCLA Asian American Pacific Islands Law Journal 1 (1993): 79-84; Tomás Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
6. There are excellent studies of how Whites and Blacks or Whites and Asian Americans have been racialized relative to one another. See, for example, David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness (London: Verso, 1991) and Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). However, I am aware of few works that go significantly beyond dyadic analysis.
7. There are excellent studies of how Whites and Blacks or Whites and Asian Americans have been racialized relative to one another. See, for example, David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness (London: Verso, 1991) and Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). However, I am aware of few works that go significantly beyond dyadic analysis.
8. In a single-scale hierarchy consisting of groups A, B, and C (from top to bottom), group B possesses all of the privileges that group C possesses and more; Asians living under South African apartheid were a classic group B. Racial ordering in the United States has been more complex: Asian Americans have been more privileged than Blacks in certain ways and less privileged in others.
9. Angelo Ancheta, Race, Rights and the Asian American Experience (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998).
10. Neil Gotanda, " 'Other Non-Whites' in American Legal History: A Review of Justice at War," Columbia Law Review 85 (June 1985): 1186-92.
11. Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, revised and expanded edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 403.
12. I discuss only two axes of racial domination, but I am open to the argument that there are in fact more. This is a matter to be investigated empirically rather than determined a priori. The reader will notice that I do not discuss Native Americans or Chicanos/Latinos in this paper, although both groups figured prominently in the history of the West generally and California in particular. This is primarily a decision of economy that is defensible insofar as Asian Americans were usually compared with Blacks and Whites rather than with these other two groups, who were less integrated into the expanding capitalist labor market. Still, a study of Native Americans and Chicanos/Latinos and their respective places in the field of racial positions would complement this paper nicely. My preliminary impression is that Latinos have been triangulated vis-à-vis Blacks and Whites in much the same way that Asian Americans have, and that this triangulation has varied somewhat across time (upper-class Mexicanos were considered "near White" during the late 1800s, while current Mexican immigrants are considered "near Black") and national origin subgroup (Cuban Americans are seen as a model minority, while Puerto Ricans are seen as part of the under-class).
13. I argue throughout that the field of racial positions (and racial triangulation specifically) reinforces White dominance in various ways and that White opinionmakers sometimes deploy it quite strategically in defense of their own group interests. However, I am not making the claim that the field of racial positions is entirely instrumental or functional or that it arose for the sole purpose of abetting White racial power. It makes more sense to me to trace the emergence and development of this field empirically than to make this kind of an a priori theoretical claim about it.
14. According to the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (tenth edition, 1996), "triangulation" means a way of "finding a position or location by means of bearings from two fixed points a known distance apart."
15. Figure 1 highlights only relative valorization and civic ostracism and omits numerous other practices (or arrows) by which Whites assert dominance and Asian Americans and Blacks respond to it.
16. Paul Gilroy, "One Nation under a Groove: The Cultural Politics of 'Race' and Racism in Britain," in David Theo Goldberg, ed., Anatomy of Racism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 262-82, 266.
17. Omi and Winant, Racial Formation.
18. I do not discuss the civil rights movement era (1955 to 1965), during which Blacks challenged White dominance in the South through collective action and the elaboration of an ideology of colorblindness. In the next section, however, I do focus on how this ideology has been appropriated by conservatives during the post-civil rights era.
19. During the 1850s, the Black population in California was quite small - between one thousand and a few thousand; see Dan Caldwell, "The Negroization of the Chinese Stereotype in California," Southern California Quarterly 53 (June 1971): 123-31, 127. The Chinese immigrant population in California grew rapidly during this time, from approximately 3,000 in 1851 to over 20,000 in 1852 to just under 50,000 in 1870; Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 156.
20. During the 1850s, the Black population in California was quite small - between one thousand and a few thousand; see Dan Caldwell, "The Negroization of the Chinese Stereotype in California," Southern California Quarterly 53 (June 1971): 123-31, 127. The Chinese immigrant population in California grew rapidly during this time, from approximately 3,000 in 1851 to over 20,000 in 1852 to just under 50,000 in 1870; Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 156.
21. Stuart Creighton Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the Chinese, 1785-1882 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 159.
22. Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 17.
23. Barbara Jeanne Fields, "Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America," New Left Review 181 (May/June 1990): 95-118. Although Filipinos were classified as "Malays" rather than as "Mongolians," they too were located between Blacks and Whites and outside of the body politic. According to European ethnology, both "Malays" and "Mongolians" occupied an intermediate status between Blacks and Whites.
24. Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant.
25. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 405. The three most prominent ethnological frameworks of the time actually differed as to the precise number of human "races": Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's system included Caucasians, Mongolians, Ethiopians or Negroes, Reds, and Malays or Browns; Carolus Linnaeus's system included European/Whitish, American/Coppery, Asiatic/Tawny, and African/Black; and Baron Georges Cuvier's system included simply Caucasians, Mongolians, and Ethiopians. See Stanford Lyman, "The Chinese before the Courts: Ethnoracial Construction and Marginalization," International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 6, no. 3 (1993): 443-62. Nevertheless, most ethnologists located "Mongolians" or "Asiatics" somewhere between Blacks and Whites in their rankings.
26. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 405. The three most prominent ethnological frameworks of the time actually differed as to the precise number of human "races": Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's system included Caucasians, Mongolians, Ethiopians or Negroes, Reds, and Malays or Browns; Carolus Linnaeus's system included European/Whitish, American/Coppery, Asiatic/Tawny, and African/Black; and Baron Georges Cuvier's system included simply Caucasians, Mongolians, and Ethiopians. See Stanford Lyman, "The Chinese before the Courts: Ethnoracial Construction and Marginalization," International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 6, no. 3 (1993): 443-62. Nevertheless, most ethnologists located "Mongolians" or "Asiatics" somewhere between Blacks and Whites in their rankings.
27. Congressional debates about the bar on naturalization and the exclusion of Chinese immigrants, as well as public hearings on the latter, are rich examples of racializing discourse from this period.
28. The first phrase is from Caldwell, "The Negroization of the Chinese Stereotype"; the second is from Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams.
29. The racialization of Asian immigrants as "Mongolians" unfit for various privileges and that of various European immigrants as Whites entitled to those privileges were mutually constitutive processes. The presence of Chinese immigrant miners was "indispensable" to the construction of a White racial identity among Irish, German, English, Scotch, and Welsh immigrant miners in California. See Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy.
30. See Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, for a discussion of free labor ideology.
31. Caldwell, "The Negroization of the Chinese Stereotype."
32. Luther Spoehr, "Sambo and the Heathen Chinee: Californians' Racial Stereotypes in the Late 1870s," Pacific Historical Review 43 (May 1973): 185-204.
33. Ibid., 198-99.
34. Lewis Carlson and George Colburn, In Their Place: White America Defines Her Minorities, 1850-1950 (New York: John Wiley, 1972), 177.
35. Charles McClain, Jr., "The Chinese Struggle for Civil Rights in Nineteenth Century America: The First Phase, 1850-1870," California Law Review 72 (1984): 529-68, 533. McClain argues that Chinese immigrants were in fact remarkably politically adept. He examines their successful lobbying efforts against discriminatory taxation in 1870 and analyzes their contribution to the development of the equal protection doctrine in the courts.
36. Arnold Shankman, "Black on Yellow: Afro-Americans View Chinese-Americans, 1850-1935," Phylon 39, no. 1 (Spring 1978): 1-17, 5.
37. During the 1870s, a few employers in Massachusetts and New Jersey imported Chinese immigrant workers as strikebreakers. These labor experiments received extensive press coverage and helped to nationalize awareness of the "Chinese problem."
38. Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams, 47.
39. Ibid., 44.
40. James Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 22.
41. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 419.
42. Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese, 23.
43. Foner, Reconstruction, 420.
44. Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese.
45. Jeannie Rhee, "In Black and White: Chinese in the Mississippi Delta," Journal of Supreme Court History (1994): 117-32, 120.
46. Some Blacks derided Asian Americans who were trying to be White as Uncle Toms. See Shankman, "Black on Yellow." Indeed, some Black leaders bought into the ostracization of Asian Americans: Booker T. Washington, for instance, remarked publicly upon the foreignness and unassimilability of Chinese immigrants. On the other hand, many Black public figures spoke out on behalf of Chinese immigrants as fellow victims of White racism: Frederick Douglass denounced the Reconstruction experiment with Chinese labor as an effort to subjugate both Black and Chinese workers and advocated Chinese naturalization rights during the 1870 debates, and Senator Blanche Bruce from Mississippi spoke out against (and voted against) the exclusionary act of 1882.
47. Aside from some exceptions made during World War II, Asian Americans remained "aliens ineligible to citizenship" until the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 lifted the bar on naturalization.
48. Although Blacks have been excluded from meaningful civic participation for most of American history via a shifting combination of law, informal practice, and terror, they have not been ostracized in precisely same way that Asian Americans have. For one thing, Blacks were granted formal citizenship in 1870, while Chinese immigrants remained "aliens ineligible to citizenship." In addition, Blacks have historically been deprived of civic privileges (formally or informally) on the grounds that they are racially inferior and unfit for participation - not on the grounds that they are foreign. Today, many Whites continue to see Black immigrants as simply "Black" even as they see native-born Asian Americans as foreign.
49. People v. George Hall, 4 Cal. 399 (1854).
50. Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant, 160.
51. Lyman, "The Chinese before the Courts."
52. In re Ah Yup, 1 Fed. Cas. 223 (1878); Takao Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922); United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923). Chinese Americans, who were lumped with Blacks in People v. George Hall (1854) and distinguished from Blacks in the 1870 Naturalization Act, were once again lumped with Blacks in Gong Lum et al. v. Rice et al., 275 U.S. 78 (1927). In this famous case, Chinese American Gong Lum challenged Mississippi's practice of placing Chinese American students in Black schools (Mississippi law mandated the segregation of "colored" students from White students). Although Lum's attorney argued that Chinese American students were not "colored" -" 'Colored' describes only one race, and that is the negro" - and that they should be allowed to attend White schools in order to escape the degrading influence of Black students, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Chinese American students such as native-born Martha Lum, as members of the "yellow race," were indeed "colored" and therefore properly placed in Black schools. This is yet another example of the courts' willingness to sacrifice jurisprudential consistency in the name of protecting White privilege.
53. Spoehr, "Sambo and the Heathen Chinee," 191.
54. Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States Since 1850 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), 40.
55. Ibid., 53.
56. Between 1885 and 1924, approximately 180,000 Japanese immigrants entered the continental United States; see Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989), 45. That the 1930 census showed fewer than 140,000 Japanese immigrants living in the United States (and less than 100,000 in California) suggests significant rates of sojourning; see Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 1.
57. Between 1885 and 1924, approximately 180,000 Japanese immigrants entered the continental United States; see Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989), 45. That the 1930 census showed fewer than 140,000 Japanese immigrants living in the United States (and less than 100,000 in California) suggests significant rates of sojourning; see Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 1.
58. Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice, 21.
59. "Yellow peril" was a highly flexible term, used by White opinionmakers to refer to the different kinds of threat (military, economic, demographic, social, or cultural) posed by China and/or Japan. See Richard Thompson, The Yellow Peril, 1890-1924 (New York: Arno Press, 1978).
60. Susan Lee, "Racial Construction through Citizenship in the U. S.," Asian American Policy Review 4 (1996): 89-116, 96.
61. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 388.
62. The article presents four pictures - two of Japanese men and two of Chinese men - for purposes of differentiation, once again eliding the distinction between Japanese and Japanese Americans, on one hand, and Chinese and Chinese Americans, on the other. The Chinese men have placid, pleasant expressions; their faces are illuminated by generous lighting. The Japanese men are frowning and serious; their pictures are darker and filled with shadows. Conceding that there is no "infallible way" of telling the two groups apart since they share certain "racial strains," the author nevertheless offers ten "rules of thumb" for differentiation regarding height, weight, hip width, hirsuteness, eyewear preferences, width of space between the eyes, facial expression, facial structure, gait, and social skill. During the war, some Chinese Americans actively disidentified with Japanese Americans, featuring "I am not a Jap" signs on their businesses, homes, and, sometimes, even on their persons. Racialization, like other forms of politics, creates strange bedfellows.
63. See, for example, Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America (New York: Basic Books, 1981); William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); and Nathan Glazer, Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
64. See, for example, Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America (New York: Basic Books, 1981); William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); and Nathan Glazer, Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
65. See, for example, Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America (New York: Basic Books, 1981); William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); and Nathan Glazer, Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
66. See, for example, Omi and Winant, Racial Formation; Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1992); and Neil Gotanda, "A Critique of 'Our Constitution Is Color-Blind,' " Stanford Law Review 44, no. 1 (1991): 1-68.
67. See, for example, Omi and Winant, Racial Formation; Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1992); and Neil Gotanda, "A Critique of 'Our Constitution Is Color-Blind,' " Stanford Law Review 44, no. 1 (1991): 1-68.
68. See, for example, Omi and Winant, Racial Formation; Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1992); and Neil Gotanda, "A Critique of 'Our Constitution Is Color-Blind,' " Stanford Law Review 44, no. 1 (1991): 1-68.
69. For the concept of a "public transcript," see James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990).
70. Blanket statements about White opinionmakers are less tenable now than they were a century ago. When discussing contemporary events, therefore, I often distinguish certain White opinionmakers from others (e.g., conservatives from progressives regarding affirmative action). Not that such distinctions are always necessary: for example, White opinionmakers of all political persuasions talk about Black-Korean conflict in a similar way. Also, I use the "mass media" and "White opinionmakers" as synonyms in places because the former continues to reproduce White racial power, regardless of the fact that there are more journalists of color in the newsroom.
71. See David Wellman, "The New Political Linguistics of Race," Socialist Review 16 (1986): 43-62 and Frank Wu, "Neither Black nor White: Asian Americans and Affirmative Action," Boston College Third World Law Journal 15, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 225-84.
72. See David Wellman, "The New Political Linguistics of Race," Socialist Review 16 (1986): 43-62 and Frank Wu, "Neither Black nor White: Asian Americans and Affirmative Action," Boston College Third World Law Journal 15, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 225-84.
73. Although they constitute less than 4 percent of the U.S. population, Asian Americans are the fastest growing minority group. Their total numbers went from 3.8 million in 1980 to over 7 million in 1990 and are projected to reach 20 million by 2020. The Asian American population, which is two-thirds foreign born, has diversified by national origin (and other measures) quite dramatically since 1965. Before 1965, Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans made up the majority of Asian Americans; since 1965, other East Asian groups, Southeast Asian groups, and Pacific Islanders have come in ever-increasing numbers. Today, the largest five subgroups are, in descending order, Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Japanese Americans, Indian Americans, and Korean Americans. For discussion of the post-1965 diversification of the Asian American population by national origin, class, and other dimensions, see Paul Ong, Edna Bonacich, and Lucie Cheng, eds., The New Asian Immigration in Los Angeles and Global Restructuring (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994).
74. See Keith Osajima, "Asian Americans as the Model Minority: An Analysis of the Popular Press Image in the 1960s and 1980s," in Gary Okihiro, Shirley Hune, Arthur Hansen, and John Liu, eds., Reflections on Shattered Windows: Promises and Prospects for Asian American Studies (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1988), 165-74; Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams; and Ki-Taek Chun, "The Myth of Asian American Success and Its Educational Ramifications," in Don Nakanishi and Tina Yamano Nishida, eds., The Asian American Educational Experience (New York: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1995), 95-112.
75. See Keith Osajima, "Asian Americans as the Model Minority: An Analysis of the Popular Press Image in the 1960s and 1980s," in Gary Okihiro, Shirley Hune, Arthur Hansen, and John Liu, eds., Reflections on Shattered Windows: Promises and Prospects for Asian American Studies (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1988), 165-74; Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams; and Ki-Taek Chun, "The Myth of Asian American Success and Its Educational Ramifications," in Don Nakanishi and Tina Yamano Nishida, eds., The Asian American Educational Experience (New York: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1995), 95-112.
76. See Keith Osajima, "Asian Americans as the Model Minority: An Analysis of the Popular Press Image in the 1960s and 1980s," in Gary Okihiro, Shirley Hune, Arthur Hansen, and John Liu, eds., Reflections on Shattered Windows: Promises and Prospects for Asian American Studies (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1988), 165-74; Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams; and Ki-Taek Chun, "The Myth of Asian American Success and Its Educational Ramifications," in Don Nakanishi and Tina Yamano Nishida, eds., The Asian American Educational Experience (New York: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1995), 95-112.
77. See Chun, "The Myth of Asian American Success"; Bob Suzuki, "Asian Americans as the 'Model Minority': Outdoing Whites? Or Media Hype?" Change (November/December 1989): 13-19; and Won Moo Hurh and Kwang-chung Kim, "The 'Success' Image of Asian Americans: Its Validity, and Its Practical and Theoretical Implications," Ethnic and Racial Studies 12, no. 4 (October 1989): 512-33.
78. See Chun, "The Myth of Asian American Success"; Bob Suzuki, "Asian Americans as the 'Model Minority': Outdoing Whites? Or Media Hype?" Change (November/December 1989): 13-19; and Won Moo Hurh and Kwang-chung Kim, "The 'Success' Image of Asian Americans: Its Validity, and Its Practical and Theoretical Implications," Ethnic and Racial Studies 12, no. 4 (October 1989): 512-33.
79. Opinionmakers (including mainstream scholars) reinforce the myth of Asian American apoliticalness by consistently ignoring or downplaying evidence of Asian American political involvement. As a result, most people have no idea that there was an Asian American movement in the late 1960s - let alone that it contained a revolutionary wing or that it left a vital legacy in the form of Asian American Studies programs nationwide.
80. Moon Jo, "The Putative Political Complacency of Asian Americans," Political Psychology 5, no. 4 (1984): 583-605, 594-95.
81. William Petersen, "Success Story, Japanese-American Style," The New York Times Magazine, 6 January 1966, 20ff.
82. "Success Story of One Minority Group in U.S.," U.S. News & World Report, 26 December 1966, 73ff.
83. "Success Story: Outwhiting the Whites," Newsweek, 21 June 1971, 24-25.
84. Omi and Winant, Racial Formation.
85. Osajima, "Asian Americans as the Model Minority."
86. Martin Kasindorf, "Asian-Americans: A 'Model Minority,' " Newsweek, 6 December 1982, 39ff.
87. Lawrence Harrison, Who Prospers: How Cultural Values Shape Political and Economic Success (New York: Basic Books, 1992).
88. For a critique of the underclass myth, see Adolph Reed, Jr., "The Underclass as Myth and Symbol: The Poverty of Discourse About Poverty," Radical America 24 (January 1992): 21-40. Certain Asian American subgroups (especially Southeast Asian Americans) have been classified as part of the underclass when their behavior controverts the model minority myth. Consider the case of the four Vietnamese and Chinese Vietnamese youths who held up a Good Guys electronics store and seized hostages in Sacramento in April 1991. (Their demands included passage out of the country to fight Communists in Southeast Asia.) The media and the police promptly characterized these youths as gang members even though they had no evidence to substantiate this charge. See Michael Peter Smith and Bernadette Tarallo, "Who Are the 'Good Guys'? The Social Construction of the Vietnamese 'Other,' " in Michael Peter Smith and Joe Feagin, eds., The Bubbling Cauldron: Race, Ethnicity, and the Urban Crisis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 50-76.
89. For a critique of the underclass myth, see Adolph Reed, Jr., "The Underclass as Myth and Symbol: The Poverty of Discourse About Poverty," Radical America 24 (January 1992): 21-40. Certain Asian American subgroups (especially Southeast Asian Americans) have been classified as part of the underclass when their behavior controverts the model minority myth. Consider the case of the four Vietnamese and Chinese Vietnamese youths who held up a Good Guys electronics store and seized hostages in Sacramento in April 1991. (Their demands included passage out of the country to fight Communists in Southeast Asia.) The media and the police promptly characterized these youths as gang members even though they had no evidence to substantiate this charge. See Michael Peter Smith and Bernadette Tarallo, "Who Are the 'Good Guys'? The Social Construction of the Vietnamese 'Other,' " in Michael Peter Smith and Joe Feagin, eds., The Bubbling Cauldron: Race, Ethnicity, and the Urban Crisis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 50-76.
90. Although William Julius Wilson in The Truly Disadvantaged does attribute the formation of the Black underclass at least in part to large-scale economic processes, he minimizes the continuing impact of institutionalized racism. Moreover, others have interpreted his underclass argument as a culture-of-poverty argument so relentlessly that he has called for the expurgation of the term "underclass" from discourse about poverty.
91. Thomas Sowell, Race and Economics (New York: D. McKay Co., 1975), 128.
92. David Bell, "The Triumph of Asian Americans," The New Republic (July 1985): 24-31; William McGurn, "The Silent Minority: Asian-Americans' Affinity with Republican Party Principles," The National Review 43, no. 11 (June 1991): 19ff.
93. David Bell, "The Triumph of Asian Americans," The New Republic (July 1985): 24-31; William McGurn, "The Silent Minority: Asian-Americans' Affinity with Republican Party Principles," The National Review 43, no. 11 (June 1991): 19ff.
94. In the film, Suzie is a hooker with a heart of gold who accepts her White boyfriend's violence against her as a sign of his love. Nancy Kwan has built her career on White fantasies about and distorted constructions of Asians and Asian Americans. During the 1980s, she appeared in paid television commercials for "Oriental Pearl Creme," insisting that this product was the secret to "Oriental" women's youthful appearances.
95. Do Whites feel that affirmative action threatens their privileges? Consider the following U.S. News & World Report cover story from February 13, 1995: "Does Affirmative Action Mean . . . NO WHITE MEN NEED APPLY?"
96. See the Japanese American Citizens League, Why Asian Americans Should Oppose Proposition 209 (San Francisco); Chinese for Affirmative Action, Asians and Affirmative Action (San Francisco); and Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Perspectives on Affirmative Action and In Support of Civil Rights (Los Angeles: LEAP Asian Pacific American Public Policy Institute, 1996). Although the leading Asian American advocacy groups support affirmative action, Asian Americans as a whole have shown marked ambivalence toward the issue, perhaps in part because they have been misled by conservative efforts at relative valorization. After all, there is no reason to think that Asian Americans are any less confused about affirmative action than Whites. An April 1995 survey by Louis Harris and The Feminist Majority found that 81 percent of Californians claimed to support Proposition 209; however, this number dropped to 29 percent when they were told that Proposition 209 would eliminate all affirmative action programs in the public sector. See Janine Jackson, "White Man's Burden: How the Press Frames Affirmative Action," Extra! (September/October 1995): 7-9, 7.
97. See the Japanese American Citizens League, Why Asian Americans Should Oppose Proposition 209 (San Francisco); Chinese for Affirmative Action, Asians and Affirmative Action (San Francisco); and Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Perspectives on Affirmative Action and In Support of Civil Rights (Los Angeles: LEAP Asian Pacific American Public Policy Institute, 1996). Although the leading Asian American advocacy groups support affirmative action, Asian Americans as a whole have shown marked ambivalence toward the issue, perhaps in part because they have been misled by conservative efforts at relative valorization. After all, there is no reason to think that Asian Americans are any less confused about affirmative action than Whites. An April 1995 survey by Louis Harris and The Feminist Majority found that 81 percent of Californians claimed to support Proposition 209; however, this number dropped to 29 percent when they were told that Proposition 209 would eliminate all affirmative action programs in the public sector. See Janine Jackson, "White Man's Burden: How the Press Frames Affirmative Action," Extra! (September/October 1995): 7-9, 7.
98. See the Japanese American Citizens League, Why Asian Americans Should Oppose Proposition 209 (San Francisco); Chinese for Affirmative Action, Asians and Affirmative Action (San Francisco); and Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Perspectives on Affirmative Action and In Support of Civil Rights (Los Angeles: LEAP Asian Pacific American Public Policy Institute, 1996). Although the leading Asian American advocacy groups support affirmative action, Asian Americans as a whole have shown marked ambivalence toward the issue, perhaps in part because they have been misled by conservative efforts at relative valorization. After all, there is no reason to think that Asian Americans are any less confused about affirmative action than Whites. An April 1995 survey by Louis Harris and The Feminist Majority found that 81 percent of Californians claimed to support Proposition 209; however, this number dropped to 29 percent when they were told that Proposition 209 would eliminate all affirmative action programs in the public sector. See Janine Jackson, "White Man's Burden: How the Press Frames Affirmative Action," Extra! (September/October 1995): 7-9, 7.
99. See the Japanese American Citizens League, Why Asian Americans Should Oppose Proposition 209 (San Francisco); Chinese for Affirmative Action, Asians and Affirmative Action (San Francisco); and Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Perspectives on Affirmative Action and In Support of Civil Rights (Los Angeles: LEAP Asian Pacific American Public Policy Institute, 1996). Although the leading Asian American advocacy groups support affirmative action, Asian Americans as a whole have shown marked ambivalence toward the issue, perhaps in part because they have been misled by conservative efforts at relative valorization. After all, there is no reason to think that Asian Americans are any less confused about affirmative action than Whites. An April 1995 survey by Louis Harris and The Feminist Majority found that 81 percent of Californians claimed to support Proposition 209; however, this number dropped to 29 percent when they were told that Proposition 209 would eliminate all affirmative action programs in the public sector. See Janine Jackson, "White Man's Burden: How the Press Frames Affirmative Action," Extra! (September/October 1995): 7-9, 7.
100. Glazer, Affirmative Discrimination, 74. During the late 1990s, Glazer publicly reversed his position on affirmative action, declaring his qualified support for it.
101. The phrase "near White" is from Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams.
102. Brown and Stanford admitted to irregularities of their own accord. Internal and external reviews of the other universities produced mixed results. The Office of Civil Rights cleared Harvard of wrongdoing but ordered UCLA's math department to admit certain graduate school applicants that it had rejected. Both the State Auditor General and the California Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education investigated UC Berkeley; in 1989, UC Berkeley's Chancellor Ira Michael Heyman publicly apologized for "disadvantaging Asians" in the school's admissions process. See Dana Takagi, The Retreat from Race: Asian American Admissions and Racial Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992).
103. Ibid.
104. Don Nakanishi, "A Quota on Excellence? The Asian American Admissions Debate," in Don Nakanishi and Tina Yamano Nishida, eds., The Asian American Educational Experience (New York: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1995), 273-84, 275.
105. Takagi, The Retreat from Race, 109.
106. Teun van Dijk, Racism and the Press (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1991), 10.
107. This section on Black-Korean conflict is based upon my forthcoming book from Yale University Press.
108. On the whole, the Black-oriented media (newspapers, television programs, radio shows) offered more balanced coverage of the Flatbush boycott, seriously addressing the Black activists' political activity without attacking the Korean merchants and their advocates.
109. "Anti-Asian Bigotry," editorial in The New York Post, 24 May 1990.
110. Sheryl McCarthy, "When Boycotts Were for Just Causes," New York Newsday, 4 February 1991.
111. Newsweek, 10 February 1992, cited in Asian American Journalists Association, Project Zinger: A Critical Look at News Media Coverage of Asian Pacific Americans (Washington, DC: Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism, 1992), 7-8.
112. In the next issue of Newsweek, a reader wrote in with the observation that no one ever implied that Dorothy Hamill felt some "deep allegiance" to the land of her forefathers. See ibid., 7-8.
113. Moon Jo and Daniel Mast, "Changing Images of Asian Americans," International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 6, no. 3 (1993): 417-41.
114. Elaine Kim, "Home Is Where the Han Is: A Korean-American Perspective on the Los Angeles Upheavals," in Robert Gooding-Williams, ed., Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising (New York: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1993): 215-35, 223.
115. Cynthia Kwei Yung Lee, "Beyond Black and White: Racializing Asian Americans in a Society Obsessed with O. J.," Hastings Women's Law Journal 6, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 165-207. Thanks to Katheryn Russell for bringing this article to my attention.
116. L. Ling-chi Wang, "Race, Class, Citizenship, and Extraterritoriality: Asian Americans and the 1996 Campaign Finance Scandal," Amerasia Journal 24, no. 1 (1998): 1-21, 9-10.
117. In 1991, a Fairfax, Virginia, organization called "Americans for Fair Play" sent out solicitation letters that read in part:
118. LET'S STOP JAPAN'S UNFAIR ECONOMIC WAR AGAINST AMERICA! . . . The Japanese are attempting to do economically what they could not do militarily - conquer America! . . . [I]t took an atomic bomb to knock some sense into the Japanese. . . . [Its leaders] conceived an incredibly bold plan to (1) take over the banking and financial systems of the West (2) buy huge amounts of American real estate (3) purchase entertainment and educational institutions to change Western public opinion to more favorable Japanese views (4) "buy" significant political power in the US Senate and House and (5) loot United States oil and gas industries, agriculture, and manufacturing through buyouts, acquisitions, and "third party" takeovers. In short, they prepared their detailed "war plan."
119. See Japanese American Citizens League, The Impact of Japan-Bashing and the "Buy American" Movement on Japanese Americans: An Educational Workbook (San Francisco, 1992).
120. Robert Reich has identified at least thirty-five such books written during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Pat Choate's Agents of Influence (1990), Clyde Prestowitz, Jr.'s Trading Places (1988), Karel Van Wolferen's The Enigma of Japanese Power (1989), William Dietrich's In the Shadow of the Rising Sun (1991), Robert Zielinski and Nigel Holloway's Unequal Inequities (1991), Daniel Burstein's Yen! Japan's New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America (1988), and William Holstein's Japanese Power Game (1990). See Robert Reich, "Is Japan Really Out to Get Us?" The New York Times Book Review, 9 February 1992, 1ff.
121. Robert Reich has identified at least thirty-five such books written during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Pat Choate's Agents of Influence (1990), Clyde Prestowitz, Jr.'s Trading Places (1988), Karel Van Wolferen's The Enigma of Japanese Power (1989), William Dietrich's In the Shadow of the Rising Sun (1991), Robert Zielinski and Nigel Holloway's Unequal Inequities (1991), Daniel Burstein's Yen! Japan's New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America (1988), and William Holstein's Japanese Power Game (1990). See Robert Reich, "Is Japan Really Out to Get Us?" The New York Times Book Review, 9 February 1992, 1ff.
122. Robert Reich has identified at least thirty-five such books written during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Pat Choate's Agents of Influence (1990), Clyde Prestowitz, Jr.'s Trading Places (1988), Karel Van Wolferen's The Enigma of Japanese Power (1989), William Dietrich's In the Shadow of the Rising Sun (1991), Robert Zielinski and Nigel Holloway's Unequal Inequities (1991), Daniel Burstein's Yen! Japan's New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America (1988), and William Holstein's Japanese Power Game (1990). See Robert Reich, "Is Japan Really Out to Get Us?" The New York Times Book Review, 9 February 1992, 1ff.
123. Robert Reich has identified at least thirty-five such books written during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Pat Choate's Agents of Influence (1990), Clyde Prestowitz, Jr.'s Trading Places (1988), Karel Van Wolferen's The Enigma of Japanese Power (1989), William Dietrich's In the Shadow of the Rising Sun (1991), Robert Zielinski and Nigel Holloway's Unequal Inequities (1991), Daniel Burstein's Yen! Japan's New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America (1988), and William Holstein's Japanese Power Game (1990). See Robert Reich, "Is Japan Really Out to Get Us?" The New York Times Book Review, 9 February 1992, 1ff.
124. Robert Reich has identified at least thirty-five such books written during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Pat Choate's Agents of Influence (1990), Clyde Prestowitz, Jr.'s Trading Places (1988), Karel Van Wolferen's The Enigma of Japanese Power (1989), William Dietrich's In the Shadow of the Rising Sun (1991), Robert Zielinski and Nigel Holloway's Unequal Inequities (1991), Daniel Burstein's Yen! Japan's New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America (1988), and William Holstein's Japanese Power Game (1990). See Robert Reich, "Is Japan Really Out to Get Us?" The New York Times Book Review, 9 February 1992, 1ff.
125. Robert Reich has identified at least thirty-five such books written during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Pat Choate's Agents of Influence (1990), Clyde Prestowitz, Jr.'s Trading Places (1988), Karel Van Wolferen's The Enigma of Japanese Power (1989), William Dietrich's In the Shadow of the Rising Sun (1991), Robert Zielinski and Nigel Holloway's Unequal Inequities (1991), Daniel Burstein's Yen! Japan's New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America (1988), and William Holstein's Japanese Power Game (1990). See Robert Reich, "Is Japan Really Out to Get Us?" The New York Times Book Review, 9 February 1992, 1ff.
126. Robert Reich has identified at least thirty-five such books written during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Pat Choate's Agents of Influence (1990), Clyde Prestowitz, Jr.'s Trading Places (1988), Karel Van Wolferen's The Enigma of Japanese Power (1989), William Dietrich's In the Shadow of the Rising Sun (1991), Robert Zielinski and Nigel Holloway's Unequal Inequities (1991), Daniel Burstein's Yen! Japan's New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America (1988), and William Holstein's Japanese Power Game (1990). See Robert Reich, "Is Japan Really Out to Get Us?" The New York Times Book Review, 9 February 1992, 1ff.
127. Robert Reich has identified at least thirty-five such books written during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Pat Choate's Agents of Influence (1990), Clyde Prestowitz, Jr.'s Trading Places (1988), Karel Van Wolferen's The Enigma of Japanese Power (1989), William Dietrich's In the Shadow of the Rising Sun (1991), Robert Zielinski and Nigel Holloway's Unequal Inequities (1991), Daniel Burstein's Yen! Japan's New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America (1988), and William Holstein's Japanese Power Game (1990). See Robert Reich, "Is Japan Really Out to Get Us?" The New York Times Book Review, 9 February 1992, 1ff.
128. The "Buy American" movement ignored the glaring if inconvenient fact that American cars are increasingly difficult to distinguish from Japanese cars. Many American name brand cars are made in Japan, and many Japanese name brand cars are made in the United States. Moreover, Detroit's Big Three automakers all own stock in Japanese auto companies: General Motors owns 38 percent of Isuzu, Ford owns 25 percent of Mazda, and Chrysler owns 6 percent of Mitsubishi. See Japanese American Citizens League, The Impact of Japan-Bashing, 4.
129. In "Is Japan Really Out to Get Us?" Robert Reich suggests that the anti-Japanese furor of the late 1980s and early 1990s was a national "call to arms" - a call for Americans to come together against what they perceived as a common threat in order to strengthen their sense of identity in the post Cold War world. What Reich fails to note is the degree to which this was in fact a "call to [racial] arms," an exhortation to an imagined community that has always been exclusively White.
130. Masako Iino, "Asian Americans under the Influence of 'Japan Bashing,' " American Studies International 32, no. 1 (April 1994): 17-30, 23.
131. Japanese American Citizens League, The Impact of Japan Bashing, 9.
132. Hate crime statistics are notoriously unreliable since most state and local law enforcement agencies do not collect and record the relevant data. Indeed, police departments are often reluctant to classify hate crimes as such because they want to avoid unwanted publicity (and/or because one of their own members is the perpetrator). The Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990 mandates the collection of data at the federal level, but it still relies on the data collection efforts of lower level agencies.
133. Omi and Winant, Racial Formation.
134. My thanks to Helen Ingram and Rogers Smith for posing this question to me. I have referred to conservatives' "conscription" of Asian Americans into the racial retrenchment war, yet not all Asian Americans have resisted the draft. In this context, Mari Matsuda urges all Asian Americans to proclaim, "We Will Not Be Used" (1993).
135. My argument about racial triangulation raises difficult questions, for instance, about the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the legislation that provided reparations to Japanese Americans subjected to wartime internment. Was the Civil Liberties Act a historic victory for Japanese Americans specifically and Asian Americans generally? Or was it yet another instance of relative valorization? Can both of these characterizations be true? Consider the history, rhetoric, and possible meaning of this law. Japanese American activists deliberately framed the proposed law in terms of equal opportunity and freedom from state intrusion - rather than in terms of civil rights or racial justice - in order to win Republican votes. Moreover, the law seemed to reward Japanese American political efforts while slighting Black leaders and organizations who had demanded reparations for slavery for decades. As one Black legal scholar observes, "Granting reparations to Japanese Americans without granting similar compensation to African Americans sends the latter yet another message declaring that they are on the bottom of society's ladder"; see Vincene Verdun, "If the Shoe Fits, Wear It: An Analysis of Reparations to African Americans," Tulane Law Review 67, no. 3 (February 1993): 597-668, 659. Importantly, President George Bush's apology letter to former internees does not acknowledge the role that racism played in the internment effort. Mindful of the Japanese American community's valiant struggle to pass this law, we still need to ask if the Civil Liberties Act actually reinscribed White dominance under the guise of renouncing it. For an exploration of some of these issues, see Eric Yamamoto, "Friend, or Foe or Something Else: Social Meanings of Redress and Reparations," Denver Journal of International Law and Policy 20, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 223-42. For general information about the Civil Liberties Act, see Leslie Hatamiya, Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and the Passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993).
136. My argument about racial triangulation raises difficult questions, for instance, about the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the legislation that provided reparations to Japanese Americans subjected to wartime internment. Was the Civil
137. My argument about racial triangulation raises difficult questions, for instance, about the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the legislation that provided reparations to Japanese Americans subjected to wartime internment. Was the Civil Liberties Act a historic victory for Japanese Americans specifically and Asian Americans generally? Or was it yet another instance of relative valorization? Can both of these characterizations be true? Consider the history, rhetoric, and possible meaning of this law. Japanese American activists deliberately framed the proposed law in terms of equal opportunity and freedom from state intrusion - rather than in terms of civil rights or racial justice - in order to win Republican votes. Moreover, the law seemed to reward Japanese American political efforts while slighting Black leaders and organizations who had demanded reparations for slavery for decades. As one Black legal scholar observes, "Granting reparations to Japanese Americans without granting similar compensation to African Americans sends the latter yet another message declaring that they are on the bottom of society's ladder"; see Vincene Verdun, "If the Shoe Fits, Wear It: An Analysis of Reparations to African Americans," Tulane Law Review 67, no. 3 (February 1993): 597-668, 659. Importantly, President George Bush's apology letter to former internees does not acknowledge the role that racism played in the internment effort. Mindful of the Japanese American community's valiant struggle to pass this law, we still need to ask if the Civil Liberties Act actually reinscribed White dominance under the guise of renouncing it. For an exploration of some of these issues, see Eric Yamamoto, "Friend, or Foe or Something Else: Social Meanings of Redress and Reparations," Denver Journal of International Law and Policy 20, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 223-42. For general information about the Civil Liberties Act, see Leslie Hatamiya, Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and the Passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993).