This lesson will focus on how Asian Americans and Americans identified as Hispanic and how they have been affected by racism. For more info, please refer to Racism and Specific Racial Groups, Chapter 17 of Robin DiAngelo's book, What Does It Mean to Be White? Also consult UW Madison professor Pamela Oliver's website, continually updated here, but she also posted a PDF version of this essay on SocArXiv.
Part 1: The long history of discrimination against Americans with Asian heritage
Often, Asians are seen as a "model minority" because a large number of Americans with Asian heritage have achieved high levels of education and income. However, there is a long history of discrimination against Americans of Asian descent.
From the Asia Society's Center for Global Learning:
Beginning in the 1850s when young single men were recruited as contract laborers from Southern China, Asian immigrants have played a vital role in the development of this country. Working as miners, railroad builders, farmers, factory workers, and fishermen, the Chinese represented 20% of California's labor force by 1870, even though they constituted only .002% of the entire United States population. With the depression of 1876, amidst cries of "They're taking away our jobs!," anti-Chinese legislation and violence raged throughout the West Coast.
- 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act—the only United States Iaw to prevent immigration and naturalization on the basis of race—which restricted Chinese immigration for the next sixty years.
- 1899 Philippine-American War
From the Scene on Radio podcast season 4 episode 9 about race and democracy" America’s involvement in the Philippines, though, may be the most grossly under-discussed chapter in U.S. imperialism, and in the nation’s bloody war history. After the United States decided that it would end its war with Spain not by liberating but by annexing the Philippines, not surprisingly, Filipino nationalists disagreed and fought with the United States. And this began a war that lasted years, and arguably over a decade. It just depends how you count the war. But the United States was governing militarily at least parts of the Philippines, and fighting up and down the archipelago, from 1899 to 1913. It's the second longest war in U.S. history. And it's a war that was deeply one-sided in terms of the death counts. Forty-two hundred U.S. soldiers died. Estimates of the Filipino death toll, mostly from disease caused by the upheaval of the war, range from 200-thousand to a million or more. Immerwahr’s estimate is three quarters of a million. He points out, the most intense period of that war lasted from 1899 to 1903—four years, the same length as the U.S. Civil War."
- In 1907, Japanese immigration was restricted by a "Gentleman's Agreement" between the United States and Japan.
- 1913, CA passed Alien Land Law which barred Asians from owning land.
- 1922 Ozawa v. U.S. (allowed denial of citizenship based on race) see also here.
- 1923 Thind v. U.S. (all people perceived to be "Hindus" are not white and not citizens)
- By 1924, with the exception of Filipino "nationals," all Asian immigrants, including Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and Indians were fully excluded by law, denied citizenship and naturalization, and prevented from marrying Caucasians or owning land.
- 1942 Korematsu v. U.S. (Japanese internment camps)
- ...immigration laws remained discriminatory toward Asians until 1965 when, in response to the civil rights movement, non-restrictive annual quotas of 20,000 immigrants per country were established.
All of the discrimination means that Asian-American success was severely limited by racism. Structural racism prevented Asian immigrant success in the U.S. and that had to be changed before Asian-Americans could thrive. Asian-Americans did not stay silent in this fight. They had to fight for equality. Many Asian Civil Rights leaders worked with the Black Panthers (see the picture below from Giant Robot Magazine's (1998) history of the yellow power movement.
- Richard Aoki learned and worked with the Black Panther Party (though later became an FBI informant). NPR story here.
- Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee created AAPA and changed the pejorative label of "orientals" to Asian-Americans. Ichioka legacy here.
- Yuri Kochiyama worked so closely with Malcolm X that she held Malcolm X in her arms after his assassination. NPR story here. People's History here.
 |
| Yuri Kochiyama holds the head of Malcolm X after his assassination. |
And here is Mrs. Kochiyama with the grandson of Malcolm X:
ThoughtCo has a history of the Asian-American Civil Rights movement, the "Yellow Power Movement".
And this article from LA Mag details Gidra, the Asian activist newspaper from 1969-1975.
Is the Asian-American Civil Rights movement surprising to you? Does it change how you think about the success that Americans with Asian heritage have had?
The Social Construction of "Model Minorities" and radicalized Asians.
One way that to prevent a larger coalition of Asian-Americans and African-Americans from fighting for civil rights together was to embrace Asian-Americans while resisting African-Americans. Not only did internal pressure domestically contribute to embracing Americans perceived as Asian, but international developments also contributed to the embracing of Americans perceived as Asian. Because of geopolitics like the Vietnam war, the Korean War and the threat of communist China, it made political sense to embrace the Asian-American cause. This way the U.S. could show Asian countries how great the U.S. was and try to win over their nationals. In a sense, it was a 180-degree turn from the Komatsu decision in the 1940s.
The Social Construction of "Model Minorities" and radicalized Asians.
One way that to prevent a larger coalition of Asian-Americans and African-Americans from fighting for civil rights together was to embrace Asian-Americans while resisting African-Americans. Not only did internal pressure domestically contribute to embracing Americans perceived as Asian, but international developments also contributed to the embracing of Americans perceived as Asian. Because of geopolitics like the Vietnam war, the Korean War and the threat of communist China, it made political sense to embrace the Asian-American cause. This way the U.S. could show Asian countries how great the U.S. was and try to win over their nationals. In a sense, it was a 180-degree turn from the Komatsu decision in the 1940s.
From the Atlantic (2021), The Truth Behind Indian American Exceptionalism By Arun Venugopal
Many of us are unaware of the special circumstances that eased our entry into American life—and of the bonds we share with other nonwhite groups.
Many of us are unaware of the special circumstances that eased our entry into American life—and of the bonds we share with other nonwhite groups.
There was a term for our place in the country’s racial order: model minority. The concept is generally traced to a 1966 article in The New York Times Magazine by the sociologist William Petersen, which focused on Japanese Americans; the basic idea was extended to other Asian Americans. Of course, the notion of “model minorities” comes with a flip side—“problem minorities.”
What is forgotten is that before Indian Americans became a model minority, we were regarded as a problem minority. Also forgotten is the extent to which the U.S. engineered the conditions that allowed certain nonwhite groups to thrive.
The majority spoke English and came from upper-caste communities (as my parents did). The composition of the diaspora was representative of only a narrow slice of India: people who had the social capital and intellectual means to succeed far from home, and who had the resources to make the journey in the first place.
The result was an intense form of social engineering, but one that went largely unacknowledged. Immigrants from India, armed with degrees, arrived after the height of the civil-rights movement, and benefited from a struggle that they had not participated in or even witnessed. They made their way not only to cities but to suburbs, and broadly speaking were accepted more easily than other nonwhite groups have been.
The Color of Success; Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority
Jeff Guo of the Washington Post interviewed Ellen Wu, author of the book Color of Success (the interview is available here The real reasons the U.S. became less racist toward Asian Americans: Washington Post analysis). In the interview Wu explains that her research found
...according to a recent study (2016) by Brown University economist Nathaniel Hilger, schooling rates among Asian Americans didn't change all that significantly during those three decades [1950s, 60s, 70s]. Instead, Hilger's research suggests that Asian Americans started to earn more because their fellow Americans became less racist toward them.
How did that happen? About the same time that Asian Americans were climbing the socioeconomic ladder, they also experienced a major shift in their public image. At the outset of the 20th century, Asian Americans had often been portrayed as threatening, exotic and degenerate. But by the 1950s and 1960s, the idea of the model minority had begun to take root. Newspapers often glorified Asian Americans as industrious, law-abiding citizens who kept their heads down and never complained.
Some people think that racism toward Asians diminished because Asians "proved themselves" through their actions. But that is only a sliver of the truth. Then, as now, the stories of successful Asians were elevated, while the stories of less successful Asians were diminished. As historian Ellen Wu explains in her book, "The Color of Success," the model minority stereotype has a fascinating origin story, one that's tangled up in geopolitics, the Cold War and the civil rights movement.From NPR,
'Model Minority' Myth Again Used As A Racial Wedge Between Asians And Blacks'
[Promoting the myth of the Model Asian minority] showcase a classic and tenacious conservative strategy, Janelle Wong, the director of Asian American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, said in an email. This strategy, she said, involves "1) ignoring the role that selective recruitment of highly educated Asian immigrants has played in Asian American success followed by 2) making a flawed comparison between Asian Americans and other groups, particularly Black Americans, to argue that racism, including more than two centuries of black enslavement, can be overcome by hard work and strong family values."
"It's like the Energizer Bunny," said Ellen D. Wu, an Asian-American studies professor at Indiana University and the author of The Color of Success (excerpted here). Much of Wu's work focuses on dispelling the "model minority" myth, and she's been tasked repeatedly with publicly refuting arguments like Sullivan's, which, she said, are incessant. "The thing about the Sullivan piece is that it's such an old-fashioned rendering. It's very retro in the kinds of points he made."From CNN, The truth about Asian Americans' success (it's not what you think) by Jennifer Lee, August 4, 2015
Based on a survey and 140 in-depth interviews of the adult children of Chinese, Vietnamese and Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles -- fellow sociologist Min Zhou and I explain what actually fuels the achievements of some Asian American groups: U.S. immigration law, which favors highly educated, highly skilled immigrant applicants from Asian countries. Based on the most recent available data, we found that these elite groups of immigrants are among the most highly educated people in their countries of origin and are often also more highly educated than the general U.S. population.
Take Chinese immigrants to the United States, for example: In 2010, 51% were college graduates, compared with only 4% of adults in China and only 28% of adults in the United States. The educational backgrounds of immigrant groups such as the Chinese in America -- and other highly educated immigrant groups such as Korean and Indian -- is where the concept of "Asian privilege" comes in.From the American Psychological Association,
When highly educated immigrant groups settle in the United States, they build what economist George Borjas calls "ethnic capital."
This capital includes ethnic institutions -- such as after-school tutoring programs and after-school academies -- which highly educated immigrants have the resources and know-how to recreate for their children. These programs proliferate in Asian neighborhoods in Los Angeles such as Koreatown, Chinatown and Little Saigon. The benefits of these programs also reach working-class immigrants from the same group.
Ethnic capital also translates into knowledge.
In churches, temples or community centers, immigrant parents circulate invaluable information about which neighborhoods have the best public schools, the importance of advance-placement classes and how to navigate the college admissions process. This information also circulates through ethnic-language newspapers, television and radio, allowing working-class immigrant parents to benefit from the ethnic capital that their middle-class peers create.
Our Chinese interviewees described how their non-English speaking parents turned to the Chinese Yellow Pages for information about affordable after-school programs and free college admissions seminars. This, in turn, helps the children whose immigrant parents toil in factories and restaurants attain educational outcomes that defy expectations.
The story of Jason, a young Chinese American man we interviewed, is emblematic of how these resources and knowledge can benefit working-class Chinese immigrants. Jason's parents are immigrants who do not speak English and did not graduate from high school. Yet, they were able to use the Chinese Yellow Pages to identify the resources that put Jason on the college track.
There, they learned about the best public schools in the Los Angeles area and affordable after-school education programs that would help Jason get good grades and ace the SAT. Jason's supplemental education -- the hidden curriculum behind academic achievement -- paid off when he graduated at the top of his class and was admitted to a top University of California campus.
This advantage is not available to other working-class immigrants.
Hyper-Selectivity and the Remaking of Culture: Understanding the Asian American Achievement Paradox by Lee and Zhou
Here is the Abstract:
From the Asian American Achievement Paradox, different groups of Asians were disparately shaped by more than their own will to succeed:
A Russel Sage 2015 publication authored by Jennifer Lee, professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine and Min Zhou, professor of sociology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and the University of California, Los Angeles.
"While pundits ascribe Asian American success to the assumed superior traits intrinsic to Asian culture, Lee and Zhou show how historical, cultural, and institutional elements work together to confer advantages to specific populations. An insightful counter to notions of culture based on stereotypes, The Asian American Achievement Paradox offers a deft and nuanced understanding of how and why certain immigrant groups succeed.
Asian Americans are often stereotyped as the “model minority.” Their sizeable presence at elite universities and high household incomes have helped construct the narrative of Asian American “exceptionalism.” While many scholars and activists characterize this as a myth, pundits claim that Asian Americans’ educational attainment is the result of unique cultural values. In The Asian American Achievement Paradox, sociologists Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou offer a compelling account of the academic achievement of the children of Asian immigrants. Drawing on in-depth interviews with the adult children of Chinese immigrants and Vietnamese refugees and survey data, Lee and Zhou bridge sociology and social psychology to explain how immigration laws, institutions, and culture interact to foster high achievement among certain Asian American groups."
From Contexts,
How hyper-selectivity drives Asian Americans’ educational outcomes
by Jennifer Lee
Hyper-selectivity benefits all members of an immigrant group, because these groups are more likely to generate “ethnic capital,” which manifests into ethnic institutions like after-school academies and SAT prep courses that support academic achievement. The courses range in price tags (some are freely available through ethnic churches), so they are often accessible to the children of working-class Chinese and Korean immigrant parents. Hence, the hyper-selectivity of an immigrant group can assuage a child’s poor socioeconomic status (SES) and reduce class differences within an ethnic group. In turn, this produces stronger educational outcomes than would have been predicted based on parental SES alone.Here are a few results from Lee and Zhou's publications available in JSTOR. They are shorter journal articles that highlight segments of their later published book (mentioned above).
From Inside Higher Ed
The Asian American Achievement Paradox
Here are presentation slides from Lee and Zhou.
From Columbia University, Tran, Lee et. al.
hyper-selectivity and Asian racial mobility
Asian Americans Advancing Justice resists efforts that use Asian-Americans as a wedge against affirmative action.
How Good Are the Asians? Refuting Four Common Myths about Asian Americans, from the journal Phi Delta Kappan in 2009
3. How did U.S. immigration law contribute to Asian-Americans becoming labeled as model minorities?
4. How did global politics contribute to Asian-Americans becoming labeled as model minorities?
Part 2: Why the Model Minority Myth is Harmful
Why might it be harmful to have a "positive" stereotype such as the model minority?
See this article from the Winter 2004 Contexts:
This 2009 research published in the Annual Review of Sociology explains that many laws, and racial resentments changed in the second half of the 20th century which allowed more opportunities for Asian Americans, but the successes of Asians on average hide wide disparities that still exist.
This article published by Kevin Kumashiro, dean of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco highlights findings that were published in the Journal of Higher Education.
3. How did U.S. immigration law contribute to Asian-Americans becoming labeled as model minorities?
4. How did global politics contribute to Asian-Americans becoming labeled as model minorities?
Part 2: Why the Model Minority Myth is Harmful
Why might it be harmful to have a "positive" stereotype such as the model minority?
Although on average Asian Americans have a higher median income and higher educational level than all racial groups in the US, they face implicit bias in their own ways. It should be noted that the higher average level of income and education hide the wide disparities within the Asian American community. Thinking about Asian Americans as a model minority is an overgeneralization that hides important realities about implicit biases both in the Asian American community and in other communities.
Jeremy Lin
First, here is a post from the Society Pages that explains how the model minority myth makes Asian stereotypes more acceptable in society. Here is a clip of an SNL skit from the daily beast about Jeremy Lin highlighting the ways that the media is able to stereotypically portray Jeremy Lin - Because he is Asian, the racism is more acceptable.
Jeremy Lin
First, here is a post from the Society Pages that explains how the model minority myth makes Asian stereotypes more acceptable in society. Here is a clip of an SNL skit from the daily beast about Jeremy Lin highlighting the ways that the media is able to stereotypically portray Jeremy Lin - Because he is Asian, the racism is more acceptable.
See this article from the Winter 2004 Contexts:
This 2009 research published in the Annual Review of Sociology explains that many laws, and racial resentments changed in the second half of the 20th century which allowed more opportunities for Asian Americans, but the successes of Asians on average hide wide disparities that still exist.
This article published by Kevin Kumashiro, dean of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco highlights findings that were published in the Journal of Higher Education.
"Research in higher education shows that class and ethnicity shape Asian-Americans’ post-secondary decisions, opportunities and destinations. The model minority stereotype, in fact, begins to break down when we look at the data by ethnicity and class. While Chinese-Americans and Indian-Americans do have high rates of educational attainment, it’s a different story for Southeast Asian-Americans.Southeast Asian-Americans have among the lowest educational attainment in the country (e.g., fewer than 40 percent of Americans over the age of 25 of Laotian, Cambodian or Hmong descent have a high school diploma). Compared to East Asians (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) and South Asians (Indian, Pakistani), Southeast Asians in the U.S. are three to five times more likely to drop out of college. Southeast Asian-American students struggle with high rates of poverty and are often trapped in programs for English learners, which fail to prepare them for college. But this diversity among Asian-Americans is often lost in conversations about the “Asian disadvantage.” As a result, the interests of the most vulnerable Asian-Americans are not represented by anti-affirmative action rhetoric."
And this working paper by Nathanial Hilger writing for the National Bureau for Economic Research shows
Racism in Work; the "Bamboo Ceiling"
"Asian Americans think an elite college degree will shelter them from discrimination. It won't."; Implicit bias affects hiring of Asian Americans."US immigration policy generated positive selection of Asians both into migration and family formation, that Asians likely experienced similar or worse prejudice and legal discrimination than blacks living in CA before the 1960s, and that all of the harshest forms of legal (though not necessarily de facto) discrimination against non-white minorities in CA disappeared during the period 1943-59."
When Tara Lipinsky beat Michelle Kwan, a headline said "American Beats Kwan." Why is this a problem?
The Perpetual Foreigner Stereotype
Another aspect of racism that is hidden by the model minority stereotype is the perpetual foreigner syndrome. If someone is perceived as being Asian, there is an assumption that they are a foreigner and not really American. In some cases, the person's ancestors may have been in the U.S. for generations. Chinese immigration has been happening since the 1850s. Frequently the perpetual foreigner syndrome manifests itself in questions like, "Where are you from? Where are you really from?"
This 2011 article from the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology details the implications for ethnic minorities facing perpetual foreigner syndrome. It includes a comparison of Asian and Latino/as.
This article in the Johns-Hopkins News Letter (2017) explains the frustrations of a 5th generation American who is still asked "Where are you really from?"
Here is an article from Quartz critical of a 2016 segment on The O'Reilly Factor of Fox News which not only promoted the perpetual foreigner stereotype, but a host of others as well.
Another aspect of racism that is hidden by the model minority stereotype is the perpetual foreigner syndrome. If someone is perceived as being Asian, there is an assumption that they are a foreigner and not really American. In some cases, the person's ancestors may have been in the U.S. for generations. Chinese immigration has been happening since the 1850s. Frequently the perpetual foreigner syndrome manifests itself in questions like, "Where are you from? Where are you really from?"
This 2011 article from the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology details the implications for ethnic minorities facing perpetual foreigner syndrome. It includes a comparison of Asian and Latino/as.
This article in the Johns-Hopkins News Letter (2017) explains the frustrations of a 5th generation American who is still asked "Where are you really from?"
Here is an article from Quartz critical of a 2016 segment on The O'Reilly Factor of Fox News which not only promoted the perpetual foreigner stereotype, but a host of others as well.
From the LA Times March 28, 2018 by Jennifer Lee (@JLeeSoc), a professor of sociology at Columbia University and Karthick Ramakrishnan (@karthickr), a professor of public policy at the UC Riverside.
Wikipedia:
In the NY Times (2020) Spit On, Yelled At, Attacked: Chinese-Americans Fear for Their Safety, "As bigots blame them for the coronavirus and President Trump labels it the 'Chinese virus,' many Chinese-Americans say they are terrified of what could come next."
From NPR (2020) Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, started tracking reports of harassment and even assault in places with large communities of Asian Americans on a new website he helped launch called Stop AAPI Hate. In the site's first eight days, it received more than 650 reports of discrimination — largely against the Asian American community.
Any questions about history and racism regarding Americans perceived as Asians?
"In numerous interviews with corporate leaders, we learned that Asian Americans are less likely to be seen as leadership material, and are thus given fewer opportunities to advance and succeed. Part of this is based on stereotype. Asians are often viewed as smart, diligent, focused, quiet and technically competent — traits that make them desirable employees, but not desirable leaders. So strong are these stereotypes that even when Asian workers take creative risks, supervisors may still prefer to promote someone else."
From the Asian American Advancing Justice institute in Washington DC also addressing implicit bias and job promotion:
"While many Asian Americans have high educational attainment and work in professional fields, some encounter a glass ceiling that blocks their professional advancement. This often takes the form of perceptions that Asian Americans have poor communication skills or that they are passive and lack leadership potential. Reliance on stereotypes should not continue to pose barriers to advancement in the workplace."
Racism in Healthcare
From PRI, Asians face implicit bias in their healthcare:
A University of Chicago Research Study showed that
From PRI, Asians face implicit bias in their healthcare:
A University of Chicago Research Study showed that
"More than half of Asian Americans with Type 2 diabetes don’t even know they have it. That compares to one in four Americans with the disease overall who are unaware. Even though the American Diabetes Association changed its screening guidelines for Asian Americans, a large number are still going unscreened....That difference is so significant that two years ago, the American Diabetes Association changed the screening guidelines to recommend Asians are screened for diabetes at a lower body mass index, but that didn’t necessarily result in more screenings, according to Elizabeth Tung, a physician at the University of Chicago. She recently wrapped up a study looking at the disparities in diabetes screening between Asian Americans and other adults.Racism in Education
What we found was that Asian Americans were the only racial and ethnic group that was consistently screened less than other racial and ethnic groups,” Tung says. “We found that overall, Asian Americans had 34 percent lower odds of being screened than whites.”
Educationally, teachers will call home less for Asian students.
This article from the Atlantic highlights research by Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng, a sociologist and an assistant professor of education at New York University's Steinhardt school.
This article from the Atlantic highlights research by Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng, a sociologist and an assistant professor of education at New York University's Steinhardt school.
"Cherng’s statistical analysis found sharp contrasts in how math and English teachers communicate with parents from different racial, ethnic, and immigrant backgrounds, reflecting many existing stereotypes of black, Latino, and Asian American students....Cherng attributed this to the “very implicit, really deep bias” that certain kids “get math” and certain kids don’t...teachers were less likely to contact immigrant Asian parents about academic and behavioral struggles. Only 5 percent of math teachers and 9 percent of English teachers communicated with parents of first- and second-generation Asian students about misbehavior. And less than 5 percent of English teachers contacted parents of first-generation Asian students who rarely do homework, which was 10 points less than the frequency of contact with the parents of their third-generation white counterparts."
Affirmative Action and Race-Conscious Admission Policies
According to the national 2020 Asian American Voter Survey, which examined almost 1,570 voters, targeting the six largest national origin groups, found that 70 percent of Asian Americans supported affirmative action, while 16 percent opposed it. Chinese Americans, who were the least likely of the ethnicities to back the program, still favored it at a majority of 56 percent.
Data on Harvard’s own admissions shows that race-conscious admissions have benefitted all communities, including Asian Americans, producing a more diverse student body, Yang said.
Harvard’s admissions statistics show that the share of its admitted class that is Asian American has grown by 27 percent since 2010, according to the university's response to the lawsuit. When looking at its class of 2023, Asian Americans make up more than 25 percent, while Latinx students comprise just over 12 percent and Black students constitute more than 14 percent.
“Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have been used as a wedge and certain groups have purposefully showcased Asian American dissent to affirmative action as a way of masking their anti-Black and anti-Latino agendas,” Yang explained. “Such efforts hide the fact that most opponents of affirmative action are really trying to increase the number of Caucasian students at the expense of Black, Latino and Native American applicants.”
A working paper published last year in the National Bureau of Economic Research revealed that 43 percent of white students admitted to Harvard fell under the categories of recruited athletes, legacy students and children of faculty and staff. That share also includes what’s referred to as the “dean’s interest list,” which consists of applicants whose parents or relatives made donations to the university.
The research noted that roughly 75 percent of white students admitted from those categories, identified as "ALDCs," "would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs."
Asian American Support for Affirmative Action Has Increased Since 2016
From AAPI Data Bits
Identify at least two reasons why being considered model minorities is harmful to Americans perceived as Asian.
BONUS SECTION: RACISM DURING COVID-19
BONUS SECTION: RACISM DURING COVID-19
Disease exposes discrimination
Fears about the current coronavirus, or COVID-19, have revealed rampant racism and xenophobia against Asians. Anti-Asian discrimination ranges from avoiding Chinese businesses to direct bullying and assaults of people perceived to be Asian. This discriminatory behavior is nothing new. The United States has a long history of blaming marginalized groups when it comes to infectious disease, from Irish immigrants blamed for carrying typhus to “promiscuous women” for spreading sexually transmitted infections.
From Stacy Torres, an assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at UC San Francisco and Xuemei Cao, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University at Albany, State University of New York in USA Today (2020) Coronavirus on college campuses: Fight fear and racism along with the outbreak. If anyone can give you a disease, everyone is potentially a threat and your enemy. Crises such as coronavirus test social trust as well as science.
Matthew Lee, a health policy researcher published Coronavirus fears show how 'model minority' Asian Americans become the 'yellow peril' (2020)
While viruses and other pathogens do not discriminate between hosts based on race, ethnicity, nationality or immigration status — stigma and misinformation certainly do.
...anti-Asian discrimination has ... manifested in plummeting sales at Chinese restaurants, near-deserted Chinatown districts and racist bullying against people perceived to be Chinese.
We asked our listeners whether they had experienced this kind of coronavirus-related racism and xenophobia firsthand. And judging by the volume of emails, comments and tweets we got in response, the harassment has been intense for Asian Americans across the country — regardless of ethnicity, location or age.
GOP minority leader in the House called the virus "the Chinese virus":
From Time Magazine, Trump's 'Chinese' Virus Is Part of a Long History of Blaming Other Countries for Disease (March 20, 2020)
...one part of President Donald Trump’s reaction to coronavirus has remained consistent. More than a week after he prompted outcry by retweeting a supporter who called the novel coronavirus the “China virus,” photos from Trump’s Thursday press briefing about the virus showed that “corona” had been crossed out and replaced with “Chinese.” The President and his team have defended the use of that language—despite the World Health Organization making a point of not naming the disease after the place where the outbreak began, and despite advocates arguing that such terminology fuels the risk of hate crimes against people of Asian descent, who have already reported a surge in discrimination.While Trump may have his own political reasons for describing the virus as foreign, he’s also part of a long history of associating diseases with certain countries—a tradition that experts say has led to ethnic and racial discrimination, stymied efforts to effectively handle public health crises, and distorted public historical memory.
From Northwestern University's Daily Northwestern, Yunkyo Kim posted (2020)
Graffiti, handshakes and the “perpetual foreigner”: Asian Americans at Northwestern report alienation amid COVID-19.From a 2018 article in the American Journal of Public Health, “Spanish Flu”: When Infectious Disease Names Blur Origins and Stigmatize Those Infected" also available here.
Despite not originating in Spain, the 1918 influenza pandemic is commonly known as the “Spanish flu”—a name that reflects a tendency in public health history to associate new infectious diseases with foreign nationals and foreign countries. Intentional or not, an effect of this naming convention is to communicate a causal relationship between foreign populations and the spread of infectious disease, potentially promoting irrational fear and stigma. I address two relevant issues to help contextualize these naming practices. First is whether, in an age of global hyperinterconnectedness, fear of the other is truly irrational or has a rational basis. The empirical literature assessing whether restricting global airline travel can mitigate the global spread of modern epidemics suggests that the role of travel may be overemphasized. Second is the persistence of xenophobic responses to infectious disease in the face of contrary evidence. To help explain this, I turn to the health communication literature. Scholars argue that promoting an association between foreigners and a particular epidemic can be a rhetorical strategy for either promoting fear or, alternatively, imparting a sense of safety to the public. (Am J Public Health. 2018;108:1462–1464. doi:10. 2105/AJPH.2018.304645)
ABC News:
Asians facing discrimination, violence amid coronavirus outbreak
Wikipedia:
In the past, many diseases have been named after geographical locations, such as the Spanish flu (a misnomer, as it is generally agreed that the influenza did not begin in Spain[1]), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and Zika virus, but in 2015 the World Health Organization introduced recommendations to avoid this practice, in order to reduce stigma. In accordance with this policy, the WHO recommended the official name "COVID-19" in February 2020.[2]
In early coverage of the outbreak, some news sources associated the virus with China in a way that contributed to stigma. The journal Nature later published an apology for this type of coverage.[2][3] However, even after the majority of politicians had switched to avoiding stigmatizing language when referring to the virus, a minority continued.[2]
List of racist incidents around the world here:
In the NY Times (2020) Spit On, Yelled At, Attacked: Chinese-Americans Fear for Their Safety, "As bigots blame them for the coronavirus and President Trump labels it the 'Chinese virus,' many Chinese-Americans say they are terrified of what could come next."
The Hill reports (2020) Attacks on Asian Americans skyrocket to 100 per day during coronavirus pandemic. Representative Judy Chu said that reports of bigotry and hate crimes against Asian Americans have surged during the coronavirus crisis.
From the LA Times Op-Ed (2020), Trump’s racist comments are fueling hate crimes against Asian Americans. Time for state leaders to step in.
After news of the coronavirus broke in January, Asian Americans almost immediately experienced racial taunts on school campuses, shunning on public transit and cyber-bullying on social media. When President Trump insisted on labeling the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” in early March, these attacks became more virulent and common.
The FBI now warns of an increase of hate crimes against Asian Americans, but we’ve already experienced a surge. Since the Stop-AAPI-Hate website, a project of the Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council and Chinese for Affirmative Action, launched on March 19 to track anti-Asian harassment, it has received more than 1,000 reports from people in 32 states detailing verbal abuse, denial of services, discrimination on the job or physical assaults.
From Buzzfeed, A Man Who Allegedly Tried To Kill An Asian American Family Because Of The Coronavirus Could Face Hate Crime Charges.
The incident is just one in a surge of racist attacks that Asian-Americans have faced during the coronavirus pandemic.
Newsweek reports (2020) Cynthia Choi, co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, a San Francisco-based advocacy organization, said she has talked to Asian-Americans who have been attacked in recent weeks, including a woman in San Francisco who was spat on in the street and yelled at by a stranger and blamed "for bringing the virus to the United States." An even more violent incident, she said, was that of a 12-year-old child in the Los Angeles area who had been taken to the ER after being beaten and told he'd introduced coronavirus to the country. "All of this as we are doing our part in a health emergency and caring for others," Choi said. "Now we have this added burden of feeling scapegoated."
Racialized Hispanic
My former student Heidi Rojas is a singer and songwriter. She wrote the song La Situacion about the experience that many Americans from Hispanic and Latina decent have in the U.S.
Think about both the similarities and differences that the group has to the other groups of Americans we have discussed: White, Black, and Asian.
A Brief History of the social group from "Mexican" to "Latinx"
1848 The border crossed many Mexicans with the controversial Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo :
- 100,000 ethnically Mexican residents become US citizens technically guaranteed rights
- although Mexico demanded that the former Mexicans be given full citizenship, they were discriminated against.
1898 Spain cedes Puerto Rico to the U.S., in 1918 over 1 million Puerto Rican residents become US citizens.
1930 "Mexican" appears on US census because of nativism and economic depression.
Choosing either Mexican or White implies that Mexicans are not White.
Mexican gov. and LULAC lobby to change that and in 1940 Mexican is removed.
Despite identifying as White, Americans identified as Mexican face continued discrimination
The Birth and Growth of Racism against Mexican-Americans. The American Experience. PBS. 2009.Watch a 1 minute clip here or at PBS Local. Other clips:Watch on Amazon Prime here.
1954 Hernandez v. Texas - Supreme Court rules that discrimination against Americans identified as Mexican is illegal under the 14th ammendment.
1960s Chicano - "Chicano" emerges as a term for Americans who have Mexican heritage but they don't feel Mexican. "Mexican American" feels like a misnomer to them.
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1976 Hispanic - Cristina Mora (2014)'s research in her book, Making Hispanics, uses an organizational lens and traces how activists, bureaucrats, and media executives in the 1970s and ’80s created a new identity category—and by doing so, permanently changed the racial and political landscape of the nation.
Because of pressure from advocacy groups, political strategists and media marketers, Congress passes a law mandating the collection of "Americans of Spanish origin or descent". This is the origin of "Hispanic" which was tied to language and heritage connected to Spain. Mostly, this combines Americans with Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage but also includes people from Spain and people from over a dozen other countries, but excludes Brazilians.
Who You Calling Hispanic? (2021) From NPR's radio show and podcast, Code Sw!tchHispanic identity is recent and a social construction
How Distinct Ethnic Groups Became 'Hispanics'. Othering & Belonging Institute. 2017.
Cristina Mora, Associate Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley and member of the Haas Institute's Diversity and Democracy cluster, presented earlier this month on her book, Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American.
In the talk, which was a part of the Institute's Thinking Ahead lecture series, Mora explained that in the US in the 1960s diverse ethnic groups like Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and others were all classified as white by the Census Bureau.Activists from these different groups, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, thus came together to demand that the Census Bureau create a new category that separates them from the descendants of Europeans as part of the larger struggle for equal rights.The activists wanted to obtain data on their ethnic groups, which had been mixed with data on people who were actually white, and didn't face the same forms of discrimination as those who originated from countries south of the border.
1990s Latino - By 1990, "Hispanic" had been used on 2 censuses which allowed problematic aspects of the term to arise - The term included Spain which was not only European but also seen as an adversarial imperial power and it did not include Brazil which was in the Americas but historically Portugese. Latino emerged as a term inclusive of all of Latin America.
2000 Hispanic/Latino becomes and ethnicity - The census adjusts to allow "Hispanic/Latino" as an ethnicity with subcategories that identify with: Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc... And then race is a separate category allowing people who identify as Hispanic/Cuban/White or Latino/Puerto Rican/Black etc...
2010s Latinx - because Latino is masculine, many gender activists advocate for Latinx as a gender-inclusive term.
Despite the 1976 law and the 1990s lobby for Latino, a substantial group of Americans identifies with their ethnicity (like Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican) rather than the pan-ethnic terms of Hispanic or Latino. And because this was a label imposed upon them, many people radicalized as "Hispanic" rejected that label and that still shows up in the PEW data Explanation and history from PEW: Who is Hispanic? (2021):
The Social Construction of Hispanic Label
The Invention of Hispanics; What It Says about Race. The Heritage Foundation. 2019.
Mexican Americans had traditionally seen themselves as white. When the 1930 Census classified “Mexican American” as a race, leaders of the community protested vehemently and had the classification changed back to white in the very next census. The most prominent Mexican-American organization at the time—the patriotic, pro-assimilationist League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)—complained that declassifying Mexicans as white had been an attempt to “discriminate between the Mexicans themselves and other members of the white race, when in truth and fact we are not only a part and parcel but as well the sum and substance of the white race.” Tracing their ancestry in part to the Spanish who conquered South and Central America, they regarded themselves as offshoots of white Europeans.
Such views may surprise readers today, but this was the way many Mexican Americans saw their race until mid-century. They had the law on their side: a federal district court ruled in In Re Ricardo Rodríguez (1896) that Mexican Americans were to be considered white for the purposes of citizenship concerns. And so as late as 1947, the judge in another federal case (Mendez v. Westminster) ruled that segregating Mexican-American students in remedial schools in Orange County was unconstitutional because it represented social disadvantage, not racial discrimination.
Mexican Americans had traditionally seen themselves as white. When the 1930 Census classified “Mexican American” as a race, leaders of the community protested vehemently and had the classification changed back to white in the very next census. The most prominent Mexican-American organization at the time—the patriotic, pro-assimilationist League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)—complained that declassifying Mexicans as white had been an attempt to “discriminate between the Mexicans themselves and other members of the white race, when in truth and fact we are not only a part and parcel but as well the sum and substance of the white race.” Tracing their ancestry in part to the Spanish who conquered South and Central America, they regarded themselves as offshoots of white Europeans.
Such views may surprise readers today, but this was the way many Mexican Americans saw their race until mid-century. They had the law on their side: a federal district court ruled in In Re Ricardo Rodríguez (1896) that Mexican Americans were to be considered white for the purposes of citizenship concerns. And so as late as 1947, the judge in another federal case (Mendez v. Westminster) ruled that segregating Mexican-American students in remedial schools in Orange County was unconstitutional because it represented social disadvantage, not racial discrimination.
Julie Dowling, University of Illinois sociologist, Mexican Americans and the Question of Race.
2/3 of Texan Latinos check white with the highest % along the border
those people who checked white were more identified with this ideology of using whiteness as a strategy, while those who checked other were more identified with anti-racist politics, or they identified more or with immigrants with African-Americans. So it wasn't so much color or assimilation, but what strategy they use to combat the discrimination they faced. Because the overwhelming majority of the people I spoke to experienced discrimination — whether they identified as white or whether they identified as other. Some of the lightest people checked other and some of the darkest people checked white. It wasn't a skin color issue or an assimilation issue: It's a strategic issue.
When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity. PEW Research. 2012.
NPR Code Switch interviewed Dowling on the census and who checks Hispanic and who checks white and why.
A history of 'Hispanic', 'Latino' and the shifting concept of race.
Nearly four decades after the United States government mandated the use of the terms “Hispanic” or “Latino” to categorize Americans who trace their roots to Spanish-speaking countries, a new nationwide survey of Hispanic adults finds that these terms still haven’t been fully embraced by Hispanics themselves. A majority (51%) say they most often identify themselves by their family’s country of origin; just 24% say they prefer a pan-ethnic label.
- Hispanics are also divided over how much of a common identity they share with other Americans.
- When it comes to describing their identity, most Hispanics prefer their family’s country of origin over pan-ethnic terms. Half (51%) say that most often they use their family’s country of origin to describe their identity.
- “Hispanic” or “Latino”? Most don’t care—but among those who do, “Hispanic” is preferred. Most Hispanics do not see a shared common culture among U.S. Hispanics. Nearly seven-in-ten (69%) say Hispanics in the U.S. have many different cultures, while 29% say Hispanics in the U.S. share a common culture.
Colorism
Colorism and Hispanic Identity from PEW (2021)
What does it mean to be Latino? From NPR's radio show and podcast, Code Sw!tch
The Institutionalization of Hispanic Panethnicity 1965 to 1990. American Sociological Review. 2014.
ABSTRACTResearch on racial/ethnic categorization provides insight on how broad processes, such as migration trends or political shifts, precede the establishment of new categories, but does not detail the struggles and compromises that emerge between state and non-state actors. As a result, we know little about why new census categories are defined in certain ways or how they become legitimate. This article addresses this gap by using an organizational lens to reconstruct how the Hispanic category emerged in the United States. I demonstrate that categories can become institutionalized through a two-stage process as state actors and ethnic entrepreneurs (1) negotiate a classification's definition and (2) work together to popularize the category. I argue that cross-field effects undergird these stages—movements toward developing a new category within state agencies are reinforced by similar classification efforts occurring among social movement groups and media firms, and vice versa. I identify three organizational mechanisms that sustained these effects in the Hispanic case: the development of boundary spanning networks between state and non-state actors, the transposition of resources across fields, and the use of analogy and ambiguity as cognitive tools to describe and legitimate the new category. I discuss the theoretical merits of incorporating organizational analysis, especially the concept of cross-field effects, into the study of racial/ethnic classification.
When it comes to reporting their racial identity, Latinos stand out from other Americans. In the 2010 census, for example, 94% of the U.S. population selected at least one of the five standard, government-defined racial categories – white, black, Asian, American Indian or Pacific Islander. But among Latinos, just 63% selected at least one of these categories; 37% of Latinos, or 19 million, instead selected only “some other race,” with many offering write-in responses such as “Mexican,” Hispanic” or “Latin American.”
Federal policy defines “Hispanic” not as a race, but as an ethnicity. And it prescribes that Hispanics can in fact be of any race. But these census findings suggest that standard U.S. racial categories might either be confusing or not provide relevant options for Hispanics to describe their racial identity. They also raise an important question long pondered by social scientists and policymakers: Do Hispanics consider their Hispanic background to be part of their racial background, their ethnic background or both?
A new Pew Research Center survey of multiracial Americans finds that, for two-thirds of Hispanics, their Hispanic background is a part of their racial background – not something separate. This suggests that Hispanics have a unique view of race that doesn’t necessarily fit within the official U.S. definitions.
The Latino Flight to Whiteness. The American Prospect. (2016)
In a 1997 article in the Journal of Black Studies, sociologists Jonathan Warren and France Twine had already challenged the view that the United States was gravitating toward a white minority population because of evidence that the new immigrant population tends to identify as white. A similar preference for whiteness is present among Hispanics who select a single category as their racial identity. In the 2010 census, the majority of Hispanic respondents, 53 percent, said they are white, a mere 2.5 percent said they are black, and more than 35 percent chose a category other than black or white (some choosing "Hispanic" itself or their national origin as their racial classification). A majority of "single-race" Hispanics selected a white racial identity.The census does not include information about an individual's physical appearance. But there are surveys that enable us to compare the interviewees' self-reported race with their complexion as judged by the interviewer. In a survey devoted exclusively to Hispanics, the interviewers coded the respondents on a continuum of Very Light, Light, Medium, Dark, and Very Dark. The vast majority of Hispanics coded as Medium to Very Dark said their race is white. Even among the Dark and Very Dark respondents less than 5 percent said they are black. (For these findings, see William Darity Jr., Jason Dietrich, and Darrick Hamilton, "Bleach in the Rainbow: Latin Ethnicity and Preference for Whiteness," Transforming Anthropology, 13:2 October 2005 103-109.) The preference for whiteness among Hispanics parallels a flight from blackness.
Discrimination and Prejudice against people identified as Hispanic
Racism, Not a Lack of Assimilation Is the Real Problem Facing Latinos in America, From NBC News (2019),
A bounty of research debunks the idea that Latinos are not integrated into American society: Latino immigrants, like other immigrant groups, are completely English dominant by the third generation; their economic mobility rate is almost equal to that of whites; and Hispanics are more likely to marry outside their group than blacks or whites.
Disparities do remain, but those who tell Latinos to assimilate often fail to acknowledge the centuries of exclusion, racism and systemic discrimination that have slowed Latinos’ economic and social mobility. Racism puts up practical roadblocks to integration and participation, preventing Latinos from being accepted as “assimilated,” experts said....a recent report found that in Iowa City, Iowa, Latinos were denied home loans four times more often than whites, the biggest disparity in the country. This adds to the wealth gap between whites and Latinos because most families’ net worth comes from their homes and their equity....
When it comes to language, many Latinos see a double standard. “It is a deficit when you speak Spanish, but it’s an asset to whites and white Americans when they speak it,” said scholar and educator Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, who documented racism in the criminal justice system in her book, “Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court.” “This is the ultimate form of exclusion.”
The 'Forgotten' History Of Anti-Latino Violence In The U.S., from NPR (2019),
The rate of hate crimes against Latinos in the U.S. is at its highest in nearly a decade, according to an annual report by the FBI.
The report revealed 485 hate crimes against Latinos in 2018. That’s 58 more than reported the year before and surpassing those against Muslims and Arab Americans.
The Brutal History of Latino Discrimination in America, from History.com (2017)
A History of Anti-Hispanic Bigotry in the United States; This Animus Bubbles Up Frequently, with Devastating Results. Washington Post. 2019.
Marie Arana details the various peaks of racism toward people seen as non-white from the Western Hemisphere.
Paradox in Trumpian America:
'It's worse than ever': how Latinos are changing their lives in Trump's America from The Guardian (2019),
Donald Trump Announces Presidential Bid By Trashing Mexico, Mexicans, from NBC News (2015)
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best. They're not sending you, they're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems," Trump said in a speech at Trump Tower in New York. "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists...
Why do you think this paradox exists; Why would Hispanics support Trump's 2020 candidacy?
Racial Identity and Racial Treatment of Mexican Americans. Vilma Ortiz and Edward Telles. 2012.
Abstract: How racial barriers play in the experiences of Mexican Americans has been hotly debated. Some consider Mexican Americans similar to European Americans of a century ago that arrived in the United States with modest backgrounds but were eventually able to participate fully in society. In contrast, others argue that Mexican Americans have been racialized throughout U.S. history and this limits their participation in society. The evidence of persistent educational disadvantages across generations and frequent reports of discrimination and stereotyping support the racialization argument. In this paper, we explore the ways in which race plays a role in the lives of Mexican Americans by examining how education, racial characteristics, social interactions, relate to racial outcomes. We use the Mexican American Study Project, a unique data set based on a 1965 survey of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio combined with surveys of the same respondents and their adult children in 2000, thereby creating a longitudinal and intergenerational data set. First, we found that darker Mexican Americans, therefore appearing more stereotypically Mexican, report more experiences of discrimination. Second, darker men report much more discrimination than lighter men and than women overall. Third, more educated Mexican Americans experience more stereotyping and discrimination than their less-educated counterparts, which is partly due to their greater contact with Whites. Lastly, having greater contact with Whites leads to experiencing more stereotyping and discrimination. Our results are indicative of the ways in which Mexican Americans are racialized in the United States.
Who Are the "Illegals"? The Social Construction of Illegality in the United States. Flores, Rene and Schacter, Ariela. American Sociological Review. 2018.
Wash U and U of Chicago sociology professors explain that political rhetoric, racist stereotypes drive false notions about immigrant criminality.
From Wash U news:Fueled by political rhetoric evoking dangerous criminal immigrants, many white Americans assume low-status immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Syria, Somalia and other countries President Donald Trump labeled “shithole” nations have no legal right to be in the United States, new research in the journal American Sociological Review suggests.
In the eyes of many white Americans, just knowing an immigrant’s national origin is enough to believe they are probably undocumented, said Ariela Schachter, study co-author and assistant professor of sociology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
“Our study demonstrates that the white American public has these shared, often factually incorrect, stereotypes about who undocumented immigrants are,” Schachter said. “And this is dangerous because individuals who fit this ‘profile’ likely face additional poor treatment and discrimination because of suspicions of their illegality, regardless of their actual documentation.”
Findings suggest that the mere perception of illegal status may be enough to place legal immigrants, and even U.S. citizens, at greater risk for discrimination in housing and hiring, for criminal profiling and arrest by law enforcement, and for public harassment and hate crimes in the communities they now call home. “When people form impressions about who they think is ‘illegal,’ they often do not have access to individuals’ actual documents. There have actually been a number of recent incidents in which legal immigrants and even U.S. born Americans are confronted by immigration authorities about their status. So these judgments seem to be based on social stereotypes. Our goal was to systematically uncover them,” said study co-author René D. Flores, the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago.
From a broader sociological perspective, Schachter and Flores argue that an immigrant’s real standing in American society is shaped not just by legal documentation, but also by social perceptions.
“These findings reveal a new source of ethnic-based inequalities — ‘social illegality’ — that may potentially increase law enforcement scrutiny and influence the decisions of hiring managers, landlords, teachers and other members of the public,” they conclude in the research.
Conducted in November 2017, the experimental survey asked a representative sample of 1,500 non-Hispanic white Americans to guess whether a hypothetical immigrant was in the country illegally — and perhaps a threat worth reporting to authorities — based on the reading of a brief biographical sketch.
By systematically varying the immigrant’s nation of origin, education level, language skills, police record, gender, age, race and other variables, researchers created a pool of nearly 7 million unique immigrant sketches that touched on a range of stereotypes. Each respondent was randomly assigned to view 10 of these unique sketches during the survey.
Using complex statistical analysis, researchers estimated how much each of these individual immigrant traits and stereotypes influenced the assumptions of white Americans from various demographic backgrounds, geographic regions and self-identified political affiliations.
Surprisingly, the study found that white Republicans and white Democrats jump to many of the same conclusions about the legal status of hypothetical immigrants — except when it comes to the receipt of government benefits.
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