Becoming White as a Necessity?: Can the Asian American claim for a legitimate place in the US be made without becoming white?

Stephanie Wössner

Nov 2009 · GRIN Verlag

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Essay from the year 2002 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: A-, San Francisco State University (Ethnic Studies), course: AAS 710 Seminar: Critical Approaches, language: English, abstract: Race in the US has always been defined in white and black categories. Groups who do not obviously fit in any of these two categories have had a hard time defining their own position within such a society, and society, likewise, has had a hard time to decide where to put them. Asians, mostly because of their outside appearance have usually been given a position in between black and white. Since the 1960s, they have, on the one hand, been pitted against Blacks as a “model minority” and, on the other hand, they have not been given equality with whites. White society has had a particular hard time attributing Filipinos and Asian Indians, who are today considered Asians, a racial category, for they do not look Asian and usually have a dark skin color. In the case of Asian Indians, there was also the issue that they are Caucasian. The dichotomy of white and black has also very often been associated with that of good and evil, smart and stupid, superior and inferior and the like. Because of this harsh opposition of black and white, without a gray zone in between, the question whether or not Asians have to become “white” in order to achieve the position or place they claim has to be considered very carefully.

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