Although I did not send you a discussion prompt this week (consider this one a freebie), there still is a reading for the class for our discussion tomorrow. I wanted to give you some pointers as guidance as you finish preparing for the class. The article is dense and it’s easy to get lost in detail — so your job is 1) understand the framing of Claire Jean Kim’s argument, 2) move through the article to see the examples of how triangulation works in history, and 3) bring the framing to examples today from your own knowledge, research, or experience. You do not have a discussion prompt due, but please do prepare with these framings in mind.
Claire Jean Kim published “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans” in 1999 in Politics & Society. She divides the evidence in her article into two time periods: the 1850s–1965 and 1965 to her present day. Since the piece was published in 1999, a number of things have changed, not least Michigan’s ban on affirmative action being upheld by the US Supreme Court.
Here’s an approach to reading this article strategically:
- Start off by reading the intro & the conclusion before you read anything else
- Be able to define for yourself:
- What is racial triangulation? (How does the diagram on p. 108 work?) What are its dynamics?
- What is meant by relative valorization?
- What is meant by civic ostracization?
- Kim builds her argument using historical examples from the 19th century and early 20th century, and then from 1965 to her present day.What are 1-2 examples of valorization and ostracization that she gives in the 19th/early 20th century and from the 1960s forward?
- What about today, in the 21 years since her article was published — what other examples and experiences might you include to illuminate how racial triangulation functions for Asian Americans?