Introduction to Asian American Studies: Race and War
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1c: Where and what in time-space is the text studying?
The Kim reading breaks down the history of racial triangulation of Asian-Americans into two time periods in the United States from 1850 to 1950, and then 1950 to the present. She argues that there were explicit racial comparisons among whites, blacks, and Asians in the earlier period, while there was a shift in the later period to frame racial comparisons in the context of cultural differences. This allowed the dominant white race to hide their overt racism while still relying on racially essentialist modes of thinking.
I was particularly interested in how the Koshy reading related to this concept of racial triangulation and “the relationship between an intermediary racial group and other marginalized groups in the racial hierarchy.” This relationship is completely ignored in binary black-white theories of race in America, but the agency of minority groups is an incredibly important topic of discussion. For example, in their bids for citizenship, Asians often sought to identify as white, thus reinforcing the pre-existing notion of white superiority over blackness. Despite these efforts, the American court system consistently denied naturalization rights to Asians on the basis of extremely inconsistent and porous reasoning. Clearly, even though whites promoted the model minority myth and believed in the superiority of Asians over blacks, there was still a vast divide between whites and Asians that could not be bridged. Thus, even those Asian groups that appealed to whiteness ultimately failed in their goals of assimilation due to the racism of the dominant Caucasian ingroup. By identifying with their oppressors, Asians only made it easier for whites to use them as tools to maintain the racial hierarchy.
8. What does the author argue? In other words, how does the writer use theory, method, and evidence to propose answers or make claims?
In “The Triangulation of Asian Americans,” Claire Jean Kim is answering the call to go beyond the Black-white binary, or the common framework of race relations in America. To do this, Kim presents a two-part argument that fills in the gap between two schools of thought. The first school is what she identifies as the “different trajectories approach.” Scholars such as Michael Omi and Howard Winant argue that the process of racialization, or the “creation and characterization of racial categories,” is one that all non-white groups have gone through in different and unique ways. Kim disagrees with their non-intersectional approach to racialization and argues that racialization is indeed a process in which racial groups are continuously being defined and redefined with respect to one another and their narratives of racial oppression are intertwined, rather than siloed in different directions. The second school is what Kim calls the “racial hierarchy approach,” which places racial groups on a vertical framework of status and privilege with whites at the top, Blacks at the bottom, and other racial groups, in this case Asian Americans, somewhere in the middle. Again, Kim argues that this hierarchical way of thinking is insufficient to go beyond the Black-white binary because racialization does not occur on a singular axis, rather it unfolds along multiple axes: relative valorization and civic ostracism. Relative valorization is when the white (dominant) group praises or valorizes a subordinate group (Asian Americans) relative to another subordinate group (Blacks) on cultural grounds in order to dominate both groups. Civic ostracism is the process in which the dominant group (whites) constructs commonplace narratives of alienation and “othering” of a subordinate group (Asian Americans) in order to relegate the subordinate group to the penumbras of the body of the politic. These two measurements define the first of Kim’s two-part argument, the “field of racial positions” as the correct framework in understanding the racialization of Asian Americans beyond the Black-white binary.
The second part of Kim’s argument is that Asian Americans have been racialized, or racially characterized, relative to Blacks and whites, or using her words, “racially triangulated vis-à-vis Blacks and whites.” Kim advances this argument of racial triangulation within the field of racial positions with a robust examination throughout history and of contemporary society. The one difference between historical conceptions of racial triangulation and the more modern forms that Kim underscores is that we are living in a colorblind, or racially neutral, society in which major opinionmakers use codified language to express white dominance and power. Kim evidences her argument with an examination of racial capitalism within non-white labor competition, forms of historic Chinese exclusion and Japanese alienation, landmark jurisprudence, affirmative action and the model minority myth, and the manufactured Black-Korean conflict. With these examples, Kim shows how Asian Americans have been racially triangulated, acting as proxies for white opinionmakers, which in turn reinforces white racial power and status and anti-Black Power movements.
8. What does the author argue? In other words, how does the writer use theory, method, and evidence to propose answers or make claims?
GJ does a fantastic job at highlighting the most important aspects of Kim’s argument, and examining the ways Kim formed her argument. So as not to simply repeat what he said, I will examine the implications of her argument.
GJ discussed the shortcomings Kim identified in both the “different trajectories approach” and the “racial hierarchy approach” and her proposed argument regarding the field of racial positions and the racial triangulation of Asian Americans through African Americans and White Americans. However, these arguments do not account for Asian American and African American agency which play a large role in racialization. GJ’s list of Kim’s evidence (forms of historic Chinese exclusion and Japanese alienation, landmark jurisprudence, affirmative action and the model minority myth, and the manufactured Black-Korean conflict) make it clear that her argument is based on racialization as a result of the dominating power’s (in this case White Americans’) words, actions, and thoughts rather than the result of the minority group itself. Kim recognizes this omission in her conclusion, stating that “Racialization is clearly a reflexive process as well as externally imposed process.” Thus, her argument, rather than answering questions regarding racialization, allows us to reassess and redesign our questions, keeping in mind that subordinated groups are positioned all throughout her “field of racial positions” which can provide us with new insight into how these groups may interact and impact each other.
7. What methods did the work engage in, and what evidence based on these methods does the author present?
In Kim’s “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans,” she attempts to position Asian Americans on a multidimensional “field of racial positions” in order to move past a linear hierarchy of races with White on one end and Black on the other. The crux of her argument lies in her point that the racial triangulation of Asian-Americans has been historically persistent — while more overt and discussed explicitly in terms of race before the Civil Rights Era, the post-1965 racial triangulation of Asian Americans facilitated white racial domination in the late 20th century by masking itself in nonracial language. In order to make this point, Kim employs methods of historical and rhetorical analysis of legislation, court cases, newspapers and journalism picked from certain time periods. For example, to demonstrate the open racial triangulation of the mid-1800, Kim pulls quotes from newspaper articles about exploiting “cheap [Chinese] labor before shipping them back to China” (109). Throughout the rest of the pre-1965 section, Kim quotes testimonies from court cases that make sweeping statements about the social, biologically-determined status of Asian Americans as a race. She analyzes the language in these primary historical sources to construct her argument about the pre-1965 positioning of Asian Americans on a racial plane. In the post-1965 section, where she discusses the model minority myth extensively, she uses the same method to place the myth historically — analyzing the specific language in newspaper and magazine articles in order to discern the specific power relations between Asian Americans, Whites, and Blacks in the late 20th century and argue that these power relations haven’t changed despite Civil Rights Era reforms.
One of the most interesting use of court case evidence in this reading was the case where the same court ruled in 1922 that a Japanese-born man couldn’t become a citizen because he was “not Caucasian and therefore not White”, then in 1923 that a Hindu man, who was technically “Caucasian” was “not white by common parlance” (114). Kim argues that the courts disregarded the need to be consistent with their decision in order to “maintain the boundary between Whites and Asian immigrants” (115). From this case, it’s clear that this “boundary” is determined precisely through socio-political forces manifested in things like court decisions and legislation.
Tess does a great job of talking about Kim’s placement of Asian Americans and the discordance of including them on the black/white binary. As Tess points out, Kim pulls from primary sources to point out how Asian Americans were openly racially triangulated in the 1800s. I think this is a clear example of our discussion about historical dialectics. I propose that this original triangulation was perhaps a result of several contradictions that took place directly after emancipation, along these lines:
Thesis – America, especially California and the West Coast, needed cheap labor to fuel their growing agriculture and industry
Antithesis – California had entered the nation as a free state and could not utilize slaves
Synthesis – Use cheap labor from Asian immigrants
Thesis – Asians are ‘good workers’ and can be weaponized against blacks
Antithesis – The influx of Asian immigrants and their ambiguity on the racial binary means that they pose a threat to elite privilege and could potentially be incorporated into ‘whites
Synthesis – create a new, triangulated category so that Asian immigrant labor can still be used without threatening the white hegemony
This is just a theory of how dialectics could be used as a framework for analyzing the development of this racial triangulation and the competing factors as the racial status of Asian Americans was socially coded. It is interesting to see the competing interests within the privileged elite working to create this ‘mutually beneficial’ system.
6. What theory serves as the work’s guide to action? In other words, can you identify an established system of ideas that the author employs to explain the object of the work?
Upon reading Claire Jean Kim’s “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans,” I get the sense that Kim builds on the existing theoretical framework of critical race theory in order to re-conceptualize racial dynamics as a “field of racial positions” within which Asian Americans are racially triangulated in relation to Black and White populations. Critical race theory, as I understand it, involves the critical analysis of how race and racism relate to one another and manifest in culture and society; most notably, critical race theory underscores the influence of power structures (beyond the individual) that work to maintain white supremacy and the race-based oppression of nonwhite groups. What makes critical race theory unique is its examination of the way in which supposedly neutral institutions of authority, particularly the law, are in actuality not neutral at all, and instead perpetuate/sustain systemic racism and contribute to “popular” (and normalized) conceptions of race and racial dynamics. Following in the framework of critical race theory, Kim’s rendering of a “field of racial positions” and her subsequent explication of racial triangulation offers an illustration of the relationship between race, power, and, notably, legislation via laws, policies, and court decisions. In the text, Kim points to specific historical examples of how court case verdicts, journalistic stances in mass mainstream media, and decisions made by policymakers on a local and national scale work (ex: affirmative action discourse, the Black-Korean conflict in 1990) to relegate Asian Americans to a position in which they are pitted in contention with Black populations and thereby serve as a “proxy” for the reinforcement of White racial power and privilege. I think that Kim’s development of the racial triangulation of Asian Americans depends heavily on the guiding tenets of critical race theory, and such is how Kim is able to push past “formal colorblindness” and challenge the concept of “constitutionality” as a valid and neutral principle; the conclusion of Kim’s text explicitly prompts for a course of action that explores race, racism, and the possibility of resistance and inter-group coalition beyond intellectual/theoretical analysis and speculation, which also follows in the tradition of critical race theorists (of which Kimberlé Crenshaw is most familiar to me) whose academic and legal scholarship serve as guidance for tangible transformations in systems and institutions of racial power.
6. In addition to Annabelle’s discussion of Claire Jean Kim’s interaction with and expansion on critical race theory, I think it is useful to point out several interesting relationships that arise out of Kim’s placement of Asian Americans on a two-dimensional “field of racial positions.” Kim uses the concept of triangulation, or in other words, using two other points to situate a third point, to maintain arguments from both the different trajectories theory and the racial hierarchy concept. Collapsing the relationships in Kim’s diagram onto the superiority/inferiority axis recovers the ordering of Whites as superior to Asians, who are superior to Blacks (relative valorization). On the other hand, collapsing the relationships on the the foreigner/insider axis recovers the common idea that Asians in America are consistently cast as foreigners and outsiders (civic ostracism). In addition, Kim’s theoretical coupling of inferiority and foreignness allows her to analyze the way in which the two processes of relative valorization and civic ostracism feed into each other. For example, the recurring image of the “apolitical coolie” illustrates how existing legislation and opinions encouraged Asians to remain uninvolved politically in order to maintain a higher status relative to Blacks. In addition, the triangle shape theorized by Kim highlights the relationships between all three points on the triangle to express the idea that it was not just Asians who were defined relative to Whites and Blacks, but that Whiteness and Blackness were also redefined relative to Asianness.
1a. What were the social and historical conditions under which the work was produced, and which likely informed this work?
Claire Jean Kim’s Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans was published in March of 1999. This work was likely influenced by the many turbulent events that took place in the 1990s. The early 90s were a time of great upheaval and racial tension, especially for Asian Americans. A few of the events that likely had a great influence on Kim include the 1992 Los Angeles riots, in which there was heightened violence between the black and Korean communities. There was also the 1991 Family Red Apple boycott, which again pitted the two minority groups together as a black nationalist and activist led the protest against a store owned by Korean immigrants.
One particular instance that seems to strongly portray the tensions that Kim tries to describe is the portrayal of a Korean grocer in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing”. In it, a Korean man yells that he is not white, he is black, the same as his potential attackers. This strongly echoes the varied field of racializations that Kim tries to outline – Asians can alternately be pushed into one side of the racial polarity or the other, depending on the situation. This quality is afforded to them by their status as middling-superior, but far outsiders. These historical events, along with others, were highly publicized and controversial. They shaped the dialogue around racial tensions for the decade to come and likely influenced Kim’s paper.
It is also important to mention the shooting of Amadou Diallo, which took place in February of 1999, likely after the paper was written but shortly before the publishing, and would have shaped the discussion after publication. Diallo was a man from Guinea who spent a great deal of time in Southeast Asia. His death at the hands of the NYPD prompted tense discussions on racial profiling.
I definitely agreed with Kim that to go beyond the black white binary and consider Asians’ unique experience, we must consider races in relation to each other and not in a traditionally hierarchical format. Kim describes how the Chinese identity developed in relation to the black identity, that as slavery became rejected in society, Whites turned to the Chinese as a new form of exploitable labor. The Chinese were then lauded, deemed to be more hardworking, obedient, and less demanding than Blacks, their traits developing as antitheses to those of Blacks. These realities made Asians subject to different forms of discrimination than Blacks were such as the exclusionary policies Asians faced throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that limited their freedom in America.
Kim discusses this idea that Asians’ valorization is linked to civic ostracism; thus, if Asians were to become more politically active, they may lose their status as honorary whites. This makes me question if Asians’ status as honorary whites is the reason that they are apolitical in the first place. Growing up in a predominantly Asian community, I was extremely cognizant of the lack of political activity and how race was never discussed at all. When Asians are comfortable living as honorary whites, especially in Asian majority neighborhoods, how do they become more political? How can they be more aware of their identities as Asian Americans when they are not faced with everyday discrimination as Blacks often are?
This was my response to question 9.
2. Who is the announced and/or implied audience for this work?
In the most fundamental way, Claire Jean Kim is writing to the readers of the journal her paper will be published in. But as to who these readers are, Kim hints in the confusion of her paper of who they may be with deliberate uses of the word “we”.
She begins with “we need to do more than trace separate racial trajectories or elaborate a single hierarchy defined by Black-White opposition”. Here, the we would refer back to the academic scholars and thinkers who are reading her paper and have presumably previously thought of racial hierarchy and trajectories. Also, she refers to “we” again: “Rather than simply polling Asian Americans about affirmative action, we might explore whether relative valorization shapes their perspectives on the issue by encouraging them to publicly disidentify with Blacks”. We can tell from this sentence in particular that her audience is not limited to only Asian Americans, she would have not used “their” to refer to Asian Americans if they were the sole audience. Rather, it is apparent that Kim is speaking to a larger collective with whom she identifies with, but which does not collectively identify as Asian American.
Lastly, with the sentences “In general, we can become more sensitive to the impact of each group’s empowerment strategies upon the relative positions of the other subordinated groups and gain new insight into both the difficulty and the promise of multiracial coalitions” and “We can also be in a position to speculate about what unified resistance to the field of racial positions might look like” both refer to the necessity of this collective other to think deeply on the the racial relations and sensitivities, making this “we” most probably the citizens (and non-citizen residents) who constitute the population/society of the United States of America. Furthermore, extended readers would include anyone who is interested and willing to think openly and critically on the nature of race and its effects on the citizens of the United States, and how this may be reflected in their respective countries.
In Claire Jean Kim’s The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans, she posits her investigation in the context of the need to “go ‘beyond Black and White’ in discussions of race”. She begins by problematizing the “conventional trope of “two nations, Black and White” as “increasingly outdated”, and providing insights on how scholars have adopted two broad approaches to going ‘beyond black and white’. Some of my classmates have discussed the two methods in their own weekly discussion posts, so I won’t dwell on them here—however, it is important to note that Kim views both approaches (the different trajectories approach and the racial hierarchy approach) as inadequate. Taking the initiative, Kim positions Asian Americans in what she calls a multidimensional “field of racial positions” to show how Asian Americans have been “racially triangulated triangulated vis-à-vis Whites and Blacks.”
The questions this work aims to address include 1) what are the shortcomings and problems of both approaches that attempt to “go beyond Black and White”?, 2) how do we find a way to discuss and then understand Asian Americans in a way that “appreciates both how radicalization processes are mutually constitutive of one another and how they can unfold along more than one dimension or scale at a time”?, 3) how does this “field of racial positions” shape opportunities, constraints, and possibilities with which subordinate groups must contend?, 4) how does this ultimately serve to reinforce White dominance and anti-Black racism?, 5) how can we trace racial triangulation of Asian Americans as a historical persistence?, 6) what are the historical and contemporary reasons for racial triangulation of Asian Americans as it relates to economies?, 7) what are the effects of Asian American valorization relative to Blacks via the model minority myth?, and finally 8) how does this field constrain minority resistance?
5) How does this work define and understand race and social war?
In the readings from Kim and Koshy, I see clear themes of conservatives exploiting “cultural” differences between minority races (particularly between Asian and Black Americans) to pit minorities against each other in competition for a “whiteness” which they will never achieve. Both express a key theme from last week’s readings, that ethnic and racial divisions are socially constructed. One might argue that race and racial division are constructed in order to create social competition, or “war,” among non-whites. This makes discussion of the “ally” even more appropriate, in the context of “war.” If Asian-Americans as a minority group are indeed at “war” with other minorities, and with the white power structures that oppress them, then it makes sense that we will more easily achieve victory by allying with other marginalized groups, as we are all fighting for the same goals. However, as “A Critique of Ally Politics” shows us, true “ally-ship” requires trust and runs deeper than purported effort to “fix” another person’s problems, and as we see in the #NoWallNoBan article, opportunities for ally-ship sometimes arise not by choice, but when multiple groups of people are forced into the same context of oppression. Finally, although I had much difficulty in understanding the last reading from Chuh on Asian American Studies, it seemed to me that Chuh agrees with the idea of a “narrative of otherness,” as described by Kim and Koshy, and presents the idea that Asian-American studies have wrongly homogenized Asians in America. This aligns with the idea of race being socially constructed and understood only within the confines of our own understanding of ourselves and those around us. All these readings together I think express the idea that just as race and racial division/war are socially constructed, they can also be deconstructed, and this can more easily be achieved through effective alliances among the oppressed. Last week’s readings mostly focused on the history and definition of the problem of racism against Asian-Americans, and this week’s readings perhaps start to show us a solution to that problem.
5) How does this work define and understand race and social war?
Kim first defines race and social war in the U.S. by challenging the notion that it is limited to a dichotomous struggle between white and black. The notion is one that Kim argues is easy to believe, given that most of the conversations are framed within only white vs. black relations, but in fact other groups do play a major role, not necessarily in a direct way but as weapons and shields used in battle. Asian Americans have functioned as both during their history in the U.S., as well as been both on a favorable and unfavorable side of the politics, unfavorable when the Asian population more “represented” in whites’ eyes the black population reminiscent of slavery and then favorable as the model minority myth came about. The social war between whites and blacks thoroughly involves Asian Americans as of late, as the myth both attacks black people or other groups who aren’t “succeeding” by using Asians as an example to the rest of why culture in fact is what dictates success, as well as becomes a shield for implicitly racist and prejudiced views by allowing people to push down blacks without explicitly sounding like they are doing so.
In all of this, a big takeaway is that Asian Americans cannot claim to be disinvolved with the white-black struggle despite being neither white nor black. This group may be used both positively and negatively to impact the relations, and to cower and hide from direct involvement or support of one side or another is to be complicit in however those in power choose paint the group.