Читать книгу Asian America - Pawan Dhingra - Страница 59

This chapter provided an overview of the key analytic tools that we will use to approach an understanding of Asian Americans with a focus on race while also attending to the ways that race intersects with ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Drawing from sociological theories of “social construction,” this chapter outlined the ways that the ideas of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality are in fact social constructions. Though these ideas have biological referents, that is, they draw from differences that can be discerned in the human body, these ideas are nevertheless “constructed.” The meanings assigned to racial, ethnic, gendered, and sexual differences are generally arbitrary and buttressed within systems of power and domination rooted in white supremacy, US imperialism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. In illustrating the ways that race, gender, and sexuality are socially constructed, we have drawn attention to stereotypes and types of discrimination. We also have noted the prevailing ideologies around race that allow racism to go unchecked. We have highlighted various stereotypes to illustrate how race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality intersect in categorizing Asian Americans. Specifically, we examine how these stereotypes and prevailing ideologies manifest in particular kinds of inequalities for Asian Americans in the areas of immigration law, hate crimes, and racial profiling. How are these concepts experienced at the institutional and individual levels for Asian Americans, with what implications for understanding the United States and globalization? The rest of the book explains this, starting with historical conditions.