ASA 2 Section 2
Week 2 Blog
In Response to Jung's article "Why Ferguson Matters to Asian Americans:"
On the last paragraph of page 3, Jung talks about how Asians are often rendered invisible within the Black-White racial binary. She says that we need to "stand on the correct side of the color line." That is something that I wish she had worded differently. By saying the color line, she reinforces the idea of the Black-White racial binary when in reality, race is much more complex than that. The model minority myth (which posits Asian Americans closer to Whiteness) is not dismantled if we simply choose to position ourselves closer to Blackness in this dichotomy. To call for Asian Americans to "stand on the correct side of the color line" almost seems to reinforce these stereotypes of Black being violent and militant and White being privileged and elite when there are instances of people defying these stereotypes all the time across ethnic groups and across time. To speak of it in such simple terms negates the rich history of Asian American activists. Asian Americans have their own history of militancy (as we read in week one) and so the call should have been for Asian Americans to recognize this legacy of activism within our history. If we don't want people to think of us in a binary way, we shouldn't talk about ourselves in a binary way.
Question:
How did this Black-White racial binary come about if Asians have been in America for centuries?
source: http://www.dubois-theward.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Samuel-Joyners-award-winning-cartoon.gif
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