Читать книгу Asian America - Pawan Dhingra - Страница 47

When one of us asked his students in an Asian American Studies class for examples of racism, the students responded by listing profiling by the police, mass incarceration, enduring poverty, and the like. While of course these are clear examples of racism, they are a particular kind, that which affects primarily African Americans (and men). This shows the power of the black–white binary when it comes to understanding race, even among an Asian American Studies class. We typically think of race within the black–white binary. This means that the minority is defined in the United States as being black, and to be black means to be the opposite of white. We measure racial disparities by assessing trends among whites and the differences, typically negative, among minorities. For instance, prison incarceration rates are lower for whites than blacks or Latinxs.³ This is a clear example of racial disparities tied to institutionally discriminatory conditions. Differences in stereotypes and media images are similarly assessed. Common stereotypes of blacks are as lazy (in contrast to industrious whites), as criminal (in contrast to upstanding whites), and as sexually aggressive (in contrast to puritanical whites). This is the black–white binary. Minorities are assessed as either like blacks, and so victims of racism, or like whites, and so free from racism.

This binary offers a useful means of conceiving of race in the United States, but it is limited. If one is not perceived as black, then one supposedly does not clearly suffer from racism. But groups can experience race and racism in ways different to blacks or whites. Historian Gary Okihiro (1994) asks, rhetorically, if “yellow” (i.e. Asian) is “black or white.” The answer, of course, is neither. Yet, due to the power of the black–white binary, Asian Americans are framed as either like whites or like blacks. For example, historically, Asian Americans have been defined legally as nonwhite. In addition, Asian Americans have been stereotyped as morally deviant and explicitly compared to African Americans. For instance, Chinese were depicted in newspaper cartoons in the 1800s as like blacks (Newman 2006). At other times, Asian Americans appear like whites, even “out-whiting whites” in their educational attainment or household incomes. Similarly, they are residentially integrated with whites for the most part, unlike African Americans.

Yet even as they are compared to whites and blacks, they fit neither category completely. Claire Kim (1999) moves beyond the black–white binary without losing its applicability to Asian Americans. According to Kim’s notion of racial triangulation, Asian Americans experience racism along two dimensions: degree of cultural and social valorization and degree of civic inclusion into the nation as full citizens. These two dimensions operate separately but are interdependent. Asian Americans can be highly valorized, akin to whites, or lowly so akin to blacks. Yet, even when Asian Americans are respected relative to African Americans, they can be excluded from the nation. Asian Americans are often considered “forever foreign,” despite how long their families may have been settled in the United States. Moreover, Asian Americans’ exclusion becomes stricter during times of economic, political, or military threat from Asia.