Racial Formations & Asian American Identity

1. Racial Formations & Asian American Identity What does it mean to be Asian American?

2. race (n): 1. a local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics 2. humanity as a whole 3. a group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality or geographic distribution

3. race as a modern phenomenon • Renaissance colonialism  solidification of the concepts of racial difference and hierarchy • Drawing on previous European encounters with Asia and Africa • Questioning of full humanity of natives of the Americas • Assumption of European proximity to divinity = racial superiority

4. race as biology? • there are no scientific grounds to prove that there are multiple human races with naturally different capacities; there is only one human race • if racial difference is not real in a scientific sense, then how come we associate certain races with certain characteristics that can come to justify how whole groups of people are treated? • Biological determinism vs social construction! • 19th century graph comparing • European and African skulls 

5. race as a social concept “Race is indeed a pre-eminently socio-historical concept. Racial categories and the meaning of race are given concrete expressions by specific social relations and historical context in which they are embedded. Racial meanings have varied tremendously over time and between different societies” (Omi and Winant, 11) External physical differences Power relations in society • Race is constructed in society through relationships of power and privilege, and power and privilege in society are made possible through the construction of race.

6. racialization “We employ the term racialization to signify the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice or group. Racialization is an ideological process, an historically specific one. Racial ideology is constructed from pre-existing conceptual (or, if one prefers, discursive) elements and emerges from the struggles of competing political projects and ideas seeking to articulate similar elements differently” (14) • What is an ideology?  a systematic body of concepts or ideas believed to truthfully explain how the world operates or should operate • ex: capitalist versus communist ideology racial difference ideology

7. racial formations “The meaning of race is defined and contested throughout society, in both collective action and personal practice. In the process, racial categories themselves are formed, transformed, destroyed and reformed. We use the term racial formation to refer to the process by which social, economic and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories, and by which they are in turn shaped by racial meanings.” (12) racial meanings social, political, economicforces

8. Post-Emancipation Jim Crow Tracking Post- Race Society? Racial Formations Chattel Slavery Legacies of Civil Rights Movement

9. final points According to Omi and Winant: • ideas of racial difference are not biologically determined; they are social constructions • these ideas of racial difference strengthen and are strengthened by social, economic and political forces  the feedback loop • race is an unstable formation that is constantly challenged but still has serious consequences on the lives of people who are racialized racial formations • race vs ethnicity = imposing of categories vs self-identification • Ethnicity can be synonymous with culture

10. So what does it mean to Asian American then? • If nothing naturally or biologically determines who is an Asian American, then what does? • “it might properly be viewed as a means of achieving political integration. For some, this may simply be situational political mobilization” (Hing 32) • A racial formation! • “A less flexible view of Asian American identity is dangerous” (Hing 32) • Exclusivity, loss, & dominance

11. Asian American Racial Formations