Introduction

Question 1

Tiger Woods

Answer 1

• part Asian, but really leans into Af Am part of identity
• represents the fact that Asian Americans are invisible minority and spectrum of race from black to white

Question 2

American Racial Ideology as Applied to Asians

Answer 2

• continuum of black to white
• Asian Americans seen as assimilated and closer to white
• model minority, honorary whites
• therefore overlooked
• neglects history and persecution of Asian American history because AAs have assimilated, high economic and educational success
• Hispanics and Native Americans seen as closer to black

Question 3

Neglect and Distortion of Asian Americans in American History

Answer 3

• Asian immigration perceived as anomaly compared to European immigration
• seen as not actively participating in US’s growth and history
• still seen as new to US, but they’ve been here since 1700s
• Asian Americans invisible from view of black-white paradigm
• outsiders, perpetual foreigners, alien, invisible until concept of Asian American comes in 1970s

Question 4

Asian Americans

Answer 4

• diverse and heterogeneous
• 30+ ethnic groups
• origins in Asia
• one of the fastest-growing groups in US; 10% of US pop and expected to be 12%
• not just a demographic marker, but also oppositional to “Oriental” term
• term represents shift in consciousness

Question 5

“Oriental”

Answer 5

• used until 1980s
• from East
• complement is “Occidental” - from West
• “East meets West” idea suggests fundamental difference between E and W civilizations
• way of orienting European countries
• define west by marking east
• Oriental suggests east, foreign, exotic

Question 6

Orientalism by Edward Said (1979)

Answer 6

• suggests that in late 18th C, Europe in Enlightenment
• age of reason over faith in God
• Orientalism emerges in Enlightenment as humans seek mastery over nature

Question 7

Taxonomy

Answer 7

• classifying animals and plants – also used for humans (skin color, skull shape, hair texture)

Question 8

Orientalism

Answer 8

• knowledge of Orient produced in Europe portraying Asians in foreign, exotic way
• Orient was Near/Middle East (Arab countries)
• not necessarily accurate
• represented as strange, exotic, foreign, feminine, inferior

Question 9

Defining Orient Implications

Answer 9

• defining Orient implicitly defines West as the complement (familiar, rational, civilized)
• E-W binary created as Orient defines what West is not
• central to self-conception of Europe and the West
• usually pitted against each other (E vs. W, E meets W)

Question 10

Orient as Nautical Term

Answer 10

• sailors orient themselves by knowing where E is
• in that sense, E is fictional point that can’t be reached, but that you still use to understand where you stand in the world around you

Question 11

European Imperialism

Answer 11

• Asia, Africa, Americas
• Orient was site of Europe’s richest colonies
• taxonomy power coincides w/ imperialism
• Orientalism becomes justification for colonization, conquest, domination
• seen as needed to civilize Orientals
• Orientals seen as homogeneous

Question 12

American Orientalism

Answer 12

• also saw Asians as monolithic group
• more to orient Americans rather than understand Orientals
• affirming American mastery in time of industrialization as America also becomes imperialist
• also used to understand American nationality and identity
• connotes that Orientals are never from US

Question 13

Oriental Perceptions

Answer 13

• perpetual, forever foreigners within
• perpetual immigrants, outsiders
• never full Americans
• centrality of racism in Asian American history

Question 14

“Asians in the Library”

Answer 14

• textbook Orientalism
• called them “Unamerican” in the most fundamental, crucial ways
• racism so embedded in social structures that it made it normalized enough for her to post this on Youtube

Question 15

“Asian American” Term

Answer 15

• replaces “Oriental”
• results in change of social and self-perception of Asian Americans
• emerges in height of Oriental hatred
• not necessarily racial classification so much as solidarity, organizing term
• more what you believe (from nothing a consciousness)
• panethnic identity for a bunch of ethnic subgroups
• political identity and consciousness of society
• emerges during social upheaval in American society

Question 16

1960s Social Movements

Answer 16

• anti-war, civil rights, feminist
• questioned status quo and American institutions
• challenged racism and sexism at home, imperialism in Vietnam
• Asian Americans impacted by these changes –> fought to change perception of Asian Americans and ethnic studies in universities

Question 17

SF State College Strike (1968)

Answer 17

• formed Third World Liberation Front (TWLF)
• Hispanic, black, Asian American students calling for ethnic studies department at SF State Uni and going on strike
• it was about having faculty of color, access to education for people of color
• 5 months long
• results: first school of ethnic studies
• UCD has 3rd-oldest ethnic studies program, after Berkeley

Question 18

Civil Rights Movement (MLK) and Black Power (MX)

Answer 18

• CR emphasized nonviolent civil disobedience and “equal opportunities for all”
• CR: integration into society, caused 1965 CRA (end segregation), VRA (voting accessible; under attack now)
• BP not necessarily nonviolent and seeking “liberation, freedom, by any means necessary”
• BP: liberation rather than integration, more revolutionary
• movements would’ve come together but both leaders assassinated

Question 19

Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Colonial Movements in Third World

Answer 19

• colonialism abroad and racial inequality in US
• internal colonialism: marginalization, discrimination, racism
• solution is to liberate yourself from yoke of oppression, not integrate (BP movement influenced by anti-war movement)
• emphasis on self-determination rather than on shared power

Question 20

Anti-War Movement

Answer 20

• US racism in Vietnam War
• Asian Americans part of these movements because they had “faces of the enemy”
• soldiers made no distinction between different ethnicities –> all were “Gooks”
• racist war
• strengthened Asian America solidarity w/ Asian people in US and abroad
• claiming Asian American rights has international connections

Question 21

Feminist Movement

Answer 21

• not born a woman, become a woman
• society dictates what women should be
• same with Asian Americans –> social consciousness
• the term Asian American is a means to an end, and that end is social transformation

Question 22

Asian-American Studies

Answer 22

• anti-Oriental
• political empowerment, social change
• oppositional orientation against prevailing notions of power and authority
• race is essential to power structuring in society and coincides w/ gender, sexuality, etc., within groups
• critical consciousness and political orientation of being against white supremacy
• also seeks to advance Asians around the world (interracial and international)

Question 23

Radical Love

Answer 23

• wants transformative social change and equality
• rooted in love and compassion
• not anti-white
• just wanting a better future without white supremacy
• NFL footballer not bending a knee during pledge or national anthem in protest of police brutality

Question 24

White Supremacy

Answer 24

• not about white people
• social-ordering logic that organizes society along human differences, including race

Question 25

Challenges of Pan-Asian Unity

Answer 25

• not unchanging unity or unchanging goal
• goals and understanding of identity change as political, economic, and social processes change
• Asian Americans today are usually seen because of recent spike of immigration, and more likely to be foreign-born
• foreign-born Asian Americans bring a different political consciousness depending on their home country’s situation
• diversity of Asian Americans challenges unity and solidarity

Question 26

Chol Soo Lee

Answer 26

• panethnicity is product of social and political processes
• he was wrongfully convicted of one murder, went to jail, killed someone, got the death penalty
• young people held protests to free him, but South Koreans coming from SK were afraid of socialism and saw socialism in these protests
• young Korean Americans brought SK and Asian Americans together to fight for Chol Soo Lee
• he was executed

Question 27

What is a Chicano?

Answer 27

• from UC Race Project of UCD that was fighting for importance of ethnic studies
• Chicano is social consciousness as well as political ID for those of Mexican descent born in the US
• Chicano is anyone who can contribute to society while also understanding their situation in that society
• Chicano people understand society, can advance US to live up to its ideals while not assimilating or losing one’s culture
• “a love of self is a Chicano” –> social identity more important that political/racial demographic marker

Question 28

Objectivity and Subjectivity

Answer 28

• nothing is objective because there is always a subject acting on the object
• history is interpreting facts and giving meaning to facts, so not subjective
• history is knowledge of what is said to have happenede
• collating multiple interpretations from credible sources
• can still have accurate/inaccurate sources, but they are all subjective
• history is selection and emphasis of facts

Question 29

“History has to be rewritten for every generation”

Answer 29

• history is about asking questions, and every generation asks different questions
• historical past interpreted in different ways
• who made Asian American history invisible?
• need to change the subject of who wrote the book and rewrite history to make them visible

Question 30

Family Album History

Answer 30

• photos are snapshots of the past and don’t mean anything in themselves; need context
• historical meaning is actively produced by the subject
• history is a narrative out of facts and sources interpreted from a particular POV
• historians are trial lawyers more than detectives (putting forth an argument/interpretation)
• academic knowledge is not a data dump but a POV

Question 31

Primary Sources

Answer 31

• raw historical documents
• how we engage with the past and understand how history is constructed
• primary sources contextualize history and help get at meaning of events
• closest relationship in time and space to subject under study (laws, newspaper articles, literature, artwork)
• engage with these by asking questions

Question 32

Secondary Sources

Answer 32

• interpretations of primary sources

Question 33

History vs. Fiction

Answer 33

• history needs credibility grounded in material
• history has burden of proof: needs evidence and sources to make valid claim

Question 34

Asian American History

Answer 34

• changing subject in study of object
• Asian American people’s experiences written in perspective of Asian American experiences
• rewriting, redefining, reinterpreting, reclaiming AA historical experiences

Question 35

Assimilationist Approach

Answer 35

• assumes that it’s natural for immigrants to come, shed their past, and assimilate into America
• comes from studying European immigrants’ assimilation in early 20th C
• Asians that don’t assimilate are seen as deviants. wrong; can’t become part of American society
• AAs write against that distortion of AA culture and experience

Question 36

Contributions/Celebratory Approach

Answer 36

• celebrates diversity and everything that’s good about cultures
• doesn’t change course of assimilation because America is still seen as melting pot; one homogeneous identity regardless of immigrant composition
• multiculturalism recognizes difference without making a difference

Question 37

Institutionalized racial discrimination and exploitation (structure) approach

Answer 37

• focuses on organization of society: political and legal structures, laws, economy
• effects of these on lowest members of society (in terms of power and race)
• race is central to social power structure, and social institutions reflect that

Question 37

Agents of History (Agency) Approach

Answer 37

• people are agents of history
• despite social constraints of low institutional position, all humans have capacity to resist and change institutions
• not passive victims of social structures
• choices are made, sometimes imbued w/ contradictions, but still part of human experience

Question 38

Contingency

Answer 38

• history isn’t inevitable, people react differently
• history is contingent on people’s choices

Question 39

Structure and Agency

Answer 39

• 2 sides of same coin
• can’t understand choices w/out larger context
• “people make their own history, but not of their own choosing”
• structure is what happens to people, and agency is what people do when those things happen
• cannot make people passive victims of their environment who never respond w/ choices of their own

Question 40

Area Studies

Answer 40

• Asian studies: people of Asia; area of Asia

Question 41

Ethnic Studies

Answer 41

• Asian American studies
• perceived as outside cultural and racial boundaries
• comes back to invisibility of Asian Americans, foreignness, outside of US
• seen as more important to understand their history as outside of Asia, not US so much

Question 42

Asian Studies and US Foreign Policy Interests

Answer 42

• US needed to study the enemy in the Cold War and further policy interests with educated people
• Asian studies for a long time was about serving the status quo and power structures
• Asian American studies and 1960s social movements were more oppositional to the status quo

Question 43

Transnational Diasporic Perspectives

Answer 43

• Asian American experiences have to be understood in connection to Asia, events in Asia
• nowadays, there are linkages between US and Asia that were unprecedented when Asian American studies began
• AA studies are changing
• what happened in Asia to produce mass migrations in late 19th C?