December 7, 2016 - 01:04
okay so.
i am thinking i want a study of anti-black racism in asian communities (particularly east asian?) to become much more a part of my paper, because i want to force myself to query and confront my proximity to whiteness even as i explore the idea that my proximity to whiteness is not the only thing that defines my asian-american identity.
i really really like jeff chang's book.
i think what i want to do structurally with this paper is:
- talk about asian american identity as viewed inbetween
- talk about the model minority myth & history (and complicitness (is that a word?) in anti-black racism)
- talk about the "lowerarchy" and the stratification of racial oppression
this is leaving me without an outline (which technically according to my personal schedule i don't have to have until tomorrow)
but i wanted to post some sort of update.
Comments
anti-black racism in asian communities
Submitted by Anne Dalke on December 7, 2016 - 22:57 Permalink
hannah--
I'm appreciating the increasing refined-ness of your project, w/ its focus on anti-black racism in (east?) asian communities, and its insistence on querying (the limits of) your own proximity to whiteness. I'm fine w/ your not yet having an outline (esp. given your own personal schedule for this!),
and/but want to ask about your sense of what your methodology might be here. From your current update, it sounds as if this will this be a social-science-y exploration of a series of questions about the "model minority," one not really rooted in textual analysis, but more in the mode of approach that uses empirical methods to explain the causality of events. (As one of my students wrote several years ago, "The humanities are more content with not knowing, but rather, practice questioning and questioning, never settling on one single answer, [but acknowledging] different perceptions.")
I don't have any problem with this--one of my goals in re-directing you all into independent studies was to invite you to explore dimensions of the "poetics and politics of race" that the structure of my syllabus hadn't invited--but would ask you for some more clairty about methods here.
Looking forward to seeing what emerges (and glad to talk further if/as you'd like)--A.