Читать книгу Asian America - Pawan Dhingra - Страница 14

The term “Asian American” is often extended to be “Asian American and Pacific Islanders” in order to indicate their connections to each other. However, it is important to not conflate these groups. In this book, we use the term “Asian American” and mean it in an expansive way. Pacific Islanders receive attention in this book, although not to the same degree as other Asian Americans. Arab Americans also receive attention, even though they are not traditionally considered as Asian American. The definitions of racial groups change over time, with some groups included and other groups excluded, depending on social and political contexts. For instance, South Asian Americans were classified as nonwhite in the US Census over the decades until 1970 when they were classified as white, and then in 1980 they were classified newly as Asian American after political lobbying by the community. One aim of this book is to deepen an understanding of how the broad notion of “Asian Americans” has come to be constructed.

When one says “Asian American,” it often has little resonance to most people beyond some standard stereotypes: they are hard-working, strong in math and sciences, exotic (for women), asexual (for men), possibly threatening (economically), and foreigners. Yet, when one speaks of Chinese Americans, Filipinx Americans, Vietnamese Americans, and so on, more nuanced images come to mind. In this book, we will attend to both pan-ethnic (i.e. referring to trends across Asian-American ethnic groups) and ethnic-specific practices. While the differences between groups receive recognition, their similarities are emphasized because they too shape individuals’ lives and illustrate how Asian Americans experience key social aspects (e.g. migration, culture, race, employment, media, etc.) in comparable (not necessarily identical) ways, which in turn illustrates how Asian Americans and other groups are impacted by and in turn influence the nation and globalization.