Not Just Black or White

Ryan Ke

Section 1

Week 3

 Not Just Black or White

            Political discussions on issues involving race tend to adopt a spectrum of race that places blacks on one end and whites on the other. According to this spectrum, every other race is somewhere between these two main groups. The article, “Situating Asian Americans in the Political Discourse on Affirmative Action” illustrates the flaws of this model and aims to situate Asian Americans within the debate of affirmative action more accurately. According to the article, right discourses adopt the minority model of Asian Americans to show that the opposition of affirmative action is not a matter of promoting white privilege. On the other hand, left discourses either leave Asian Americans out of the picture or assume Asian Americans to share a similar social standing to African Americans. Both sides attempt to impose a linear model on race and fail to take into account the diversity of the Asian American community.

            I found this article interesting because I never realized how debates on political issues concerning race often leave out certain groups. I learned how affirmative action is often portrayed as an issue between blacks and whites with Asian Americans only included after the fact to further already established standpoints. After reading the article, I am beginning to see why it is so important to understand the different groups involved in an issue and how those different groups are represented. This leads me to ask the question, what other social issues adopt a linear model of race and how does that limit their corresponding debates?

Though perhaps not the artist’s intent, this cartoon demonstrates how people often portray affirmative action as an issue concerning only the relative position between blacks and whites.