Introduction to Asian American Studies Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Critical Race Theory (redux) Three Paths to Citizenship 1.Birth on soil (jus soli) 2.Blood/Parents (jus sanguinis) 3.Naturalization (racial prerequisite cases) Whiteness vs. White People Louis CK, “I Enjoy Being White”

Brief rundown of immigration law Naturalization Act of 1790: citizenship explicitly limited to “free white persons” (Civil War: Slavery Abolished) 1870: naturalization laws were “extended to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent” Page Act, 1875 – prohibited Asian women from entering U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (repealed 1943) & Alien Land Laws (Asians could not own property)

More Immigration Law After Heavy European Immigration & U.S. Industrialization Immigration Act of 1924 – established quotas for how many people could enter based on country of origin Until 1931, American women who married aliens ineligible for citizenship lost their citizenship – became stateless persons : Executive Order 9066 places ~115,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps World War II: A Racial Break (new paradigm) Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran-Walter Act) – no more racial distinctions on immigration Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Cellar Act) – abolished system of national-origin quotas (attempted family reunification policies)

The Big Question How does U.S. history (or culture, or geography, or whatever) look different if we consider it through the lens of Asian American experiences?

The Big Question How does U.S. history (or culture, or geography, or whatever) look different if we consider it through the lens of Asian American experiences? …Asian American Studies tries to answer this.

The Big Question How does U.S. history (or culture, or geography, or whatever) look different if we consider it through the lens of Asian American experiences? …Asian American Studies tries to answer this. It asks questions that don’t get asked otherwise.

Quick History Term coined in late 1960s

Quick History Term coined in late 1960s Adopted by a group of students of SF State who wanted to radically change their curriculum (“Third Liberation Front”)

Quick History Term coined in late 1960s Adopted by a group of students of SF State who wanted to radically change their curriculum (“Third Liberation Front”) A reaction against the term “oriental,” which became pejorative/offensive (painted people as forever-foreign)

Quick History Term coined in late 1960s Adopted by a group of students of SF State who wanted to radically change their curriculum (“Third Liberation Front”) A reaction against the term “oriental,” which became pejorative/offensive (painted people as forever-foreign) Through 1970s and 80s, about solidarity, uplift, building community (“yellow power”).

Then came women of color feminism… Lisa Lowe’s book Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Duke University Press, 1996) Quote from chapter entitled “Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity”: “Stuart Hall has written that cultural identity ‘is a matter of “becoming” as well as of “being.”’ It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But, like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialized past, they are subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture and power.” (p. 64)

Heterogeneity Lowe, p. 67: “By ‘heterogeneity,’ I mean to indicate the existence of differences and differential relationships within a bounded category – that is, among Asian Americans, there are differences of Asian national origin, of generational relation to immigrant exclusion laws, of class backgrounds in Asia and economic conditions within the United States, and of gender.”

Hybridity Lowe, p. 67: “By ‘hybridity,’ I refer to the formation of cultural objects and practices that are produced by the histories of uneven and unsynthetic power relations; for example, the racial and linguistic mixings in the Philippines and among Filipinos in the United States are the material trace of the history of Spanish colonialism, U.S. colonization, and U.S. neocolonialism. Hybridity, in this sense, does not suggest the assimilation of Asian or immigrant practices to dominant forms but instead marks the history of survival within relationships of unequal power and domination.”

Multiplicity Lowe, p. 67: “Finally, we might understand ‘multiplicity’ as designating the ways in which subjects located within social relations are determined by several different axes of power, are multiply determined by the contradictions of capitalism, patriarchy, and race relations, with…particular contradictions surfacing in relation to the material conditions of a specific historical moment.”

Why is this important? Lowe, p 68: “[T]hroughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Asian populations in the United States were managed by exclusion acts, bars from citizenship, quotas, and interment, all of which made use of racialist constructions of Asian-origin groups as homogeneous. The ‘model minority’ myth that constructs Asians as the most successfully assimilated minority group is a contemporary version of this homogenization of Asians. On the other hand, it is equally important to underscore Asian American heterogeneities — particularly class, gender, and national differences among Asians — to contribute to a dialogue within Asian American discourse, to point to the limitations inherent in a politics based on cultural, racial, or ethnic identity.”

A Subjectless Discourse Keeping “heterogeneity, hybridity, multiplicity” in mind, the term “Asian American” points to its own instability, its lack of unitary meaning. As Am Studies can be thought of as a “subjectless discourse.” Emphasis on radical difference rather than on “natural” sameness. This is not a crisis! For more, see Kandice Chuh, Imagine Otherwise: On Asian Americanist Critique (Duke UP, 2003)

Dissolving Binaries through Asian American Studies Black/White “Native”/“Western” Parent/Child Immigrant/Native Dominant/Minority Inside/Outside Authentic/Stereotypical Vertical/Horizontal Asian/American

What’s It Called? Asian American Studies

What’s It Called? Asian American Studies Asian Pacific American Studies

What’s It Called? Asian American Studies Asian Pacific American Studies API (Asian Pacific Islander)

What’s It Called? Asian American Studies Asian Pacific American Studies API (Asian Pacific Islander) APIA (Asian Pacific Islander American)

What’s It Called? Asian American Studies Asian Pacific American Studies API (Asian Pacific Islander) APIA (Asian Pacific Islander American) Asian-American

What’s It Called? Asian American Studies Asian Pacific American Studies API (Asian Pacific Islander) APIA (Asian Pacific Islander American) Asian-American Asian/American

What’s It Called? Asian American Studies Asian Pacific American Studies API (Asian Pacific Islander) APIA (Asian Pacific Islander American) Asian-American Asian/American (like “and/or”?) Asian??? (we often let the “Pacific” or even the “American”) part drop out! (Why?)

The Takeaway…Accept Radical Difference While Working Toward Social Justice! The term Asian American “is useful to us primarily as a way of conceptualizing a ‘politico- cultural collectivity’ (Espiritu 2) that symbolically reinterprets its histories of both inclusion and exclusion in order to effect social, political, and artistic articulation.” -Tina Chen (Double Agency 185)

What does “Oriental” mean to you?

Who Is Asian?

Who Is Asian American?

Should everyone who is of Asian descent identify as Asian American?

If Asian American is a political term for achieving equality, do you think there will ever be a time when we should stop using it?