Doobo Shim

"From Yellow Peril through Model Minority to Renewed Yellow Peril"

Abstract
Asian Americans have almost always been portrayed in mass media as stereotypes. Mid-19th-century articles and pamphlets warned white America of a Yellow Peril, a horde of Japanese and Chinese who would destroy US. civilization, and this Zed to Asian villains in books and films that persisted through the 1980s. The stereotype of Asians (IS model minorities began in the 19605, and the false image returned to demonizing Asians in the 1980s.

Why have Asian Americans recently been depicted as villains in films?’ Why were Korean Americans depicted mainly as merciless gun-toting vigilante shopkeepers in the Los Angeles riot news? These initial questions led me to pursue this study. In a time when Asian Americans are more and more aware of their portrayals in white- dominated mass media, one is led to ask where these stereotypes came from. To have a deeper understanding of those current stereotypes, this study of the history of Asian stereotypes in the media will show how they have been controlled by the ruling bloc in this society.*
Semiotic and ideological analysis will be applied to portrayals of Asians and Asian Americans in U.S. entertainment media. Furthermore, their meaning in society will be contextualked to investigate racial ideology underlying the history of Asian and Asian American stereotypes. The analysis of Asian American portrayal in the media is drawn mostly from films for several reasons. Asian Americans are relatively invisible in entertainment media other than films (see section 6). Furthermore, films are
well preserved on videotape and are recycled constantly on television. The period of the historical research in this study ranges from the mid-nineteenth century through roughly the Reagan-Bush era. Among ethnic groups of Asian heritage, Chinese and Japanese Americans are the main focus of this research since they represent the largest segment of the Asian American population and receive the
greatest attention from the media.
The term entertainment media (or text) is used to contrast with factual media (or text). Film, drama, and
other entertainment-based texts in print media and television comprise the former; news, documentary, and current affairs programs are included in the latter category. The main utility of factual media is to provide information about external reality; that of fictional media is to provide diversion. On the audience’s response to a given text, John Comer (1991) makes an interesting distinction between factual and fictional programs. According to him, “In the former, the viewer is often drawn quite directly into a ‘response’ which involves relations of belief and disbelief, agreement and disagreement” (pp. 272-73). On the other hand, after watching a television drama, audiences vary in their interpretation of particular scenes-or the involvement. This point leads us to the debate in audience reception research.
In the past, it was assumed that the power of television and cinema was so great and that the audiences were passive consumers (Fiske 1987, 1982; McQuail 1983). As communication research developed, this view was revised. For example, the popularity of postmodernism put emphasis on audience “activity.” It was claimed that the media texts were polysemic, and the audience could make
critical/oppositional readings to counter the power of media. Text is a site of hegemonic straggle. It not only embodies an “encoded” or “preferred” reading, through diverse “decodings,” but it also enables resistant political formations (Comer 1991; Fiske 1987; Morley 1992). Even so, as David Morley (1992, 31) claims, “The power of viewers to reinterpret meanings is hardly equivalent to the discursive power of centralized media institutions to construct the texts which the viewer then interprets.” The active audience argument overextends Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model, which actually stressed “strategies of textual closure” (Morley 1992, 27). Furthermore, by unduly emphasizing the role of the reader, this perspective caused “a form of sociological quietism, or loss of critical energy,” in questioning “the macro-structures of media and society” (Comer 1991,269). Therefore, political econ-
omist Robert W. McChesney (1996) came to wonder, “Is there any hope for cultural studies?”
This study focuses not on cultural consumption but on the relations of cultural production. By examining stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans and their effect on the latter, I aim to discover the racial ideology of mainstream media and society. Since the texts arise within the dynamics of socio-politico-economic practices of produc- tion, I will explore the sociohistorical contexts that gave
rise to the given texts. Sumiko Higashi (1991, 116) remarks on this point: “Contextualization of readings, as opposed to textual analysis that focus on internal logic or processes, would be useful in clarifylng issues about ethnicity both on and off screen.” Contextualization is a
rocess connecting the text to the social and historical conditions from which it was born.
The six major sections of this study each represent a recurring formula or theme specific to Asian stereotypes in the media or major factors that influenced the representations. Because these formulas or factors are the products of specific historical eras, the first five sections presenting them are in chronological order: Early Asian American Experience and the Appearance of Fu Manchu; Asians-
Sexually Distorted; Asian Americans-Swayed by U.S. International Relations; Model Minority Stereotype Since the 1960s; and The Reagan-Bush Era. These sections are followed by Asian Americans As the “Other”/The Practice of Yellowfacing and, finally, the Conclusion.

1. Early Asian American Experience and the Appearance of Fu Manchu

Asian immigration began in the mid- 1800s in response to a shortage of labor in California created by the Gold Rush. The industry of the region needed workers in diverse fields, and the white entrepreneurs saw Chinese “coolie” laborers as the solution. Chinese immigrants performed most of the labor-intensive and agricultural work essential to the development of local industry and commerce (Sue
and Kitano 1973,84; Tchen 1984).
The Chinese contribution goes mostly unmentioned, and when it is known, it is severely distorted. For
instance, Chinese workers made a great contributic the building of the transcontinental railroad, which
the central element in the social-economic development of the United States from the end of the Civil War through the 1910s. Numbering about 12,000, Chinese workers constituted 90 percent of all labor employed by Central Pacific Railroad by 1867. However, in the photographs commorating the completion of the construction, there are no Chinese; they were not invited to the ceremony. (Hamamoto 1994, 48; Tchen 1984, 5). During the the economic depressions of the time, Chinese came to be identi fied with large businesses and were regarded as enemies of small farmers and workers (Mazumdar 1989, 3; Tchen 1984,6) .3 As John Tchen ( 1984,7) says, The increased integrated national capitalist economy reeled from periodic economy depressions in the 1870s and again in the 1890s. . . . Masses of unemployed, militant trade unions and antimonopoly political rallies punctuated these periods of economic downturn. Although the much- hated “monopolists were a main target of organizational agitation, the Chinese were increasingly often made the scapegoats for social problems.
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chinese were evicted from their residences ana sometimes lynched by whites. The frustrated whites justified their attack on the Chinese by claiming that the Chinese were unassimilable others and that Chinese laborers sent money made in the United States back to China. However, statistics show that Chinese contributions to the discriminatory Foreign Miners’ Tax “accounted for at least half of California’s entire state revenues from 1850 to 1870” (Tchen 1984,5).
Penny-press journalism warned of the Yellow Peril, popular term used to warn that Japanese and Chinese hordes were on the way to take over white America and destroy white civilization. Countless cartoons in the popular press fanned the flames of xenophobia by depicting Asian: as grasshoppers attacking Uncle Sam or as subhuman- looking workers trying to take jobs from whites (Lai and Choy 1972; Morley and Robins 1995, 154). Anti-Chinese agitation increased, and both major political parties passed countless discriminatory laws during the 1870s and 1880s anxious to secure white votes. The intention of the laws was not only to restrict Chinese immigration but also to expel the Chinese from America (Tchen 1984, 7).4 Both the white ruling class and white workers marched under the
banner of the Asian exclusion movement. la race politics, the majority race unites regardless of class lines when its racial superiority and economic interests are threatened. As Hall (1986) notes, before apartheid, the South African state had been “sustained by the forging of alliances between white ruling-class interests and the interests of white workers against blacks.” The same phenomenon-white racial
unity to protect economic interests-took a renewed guise in the 1980s (see section 5).
The “Chinese Question” was resolved by expulsion and restriction. Chinese were forced to return to China or to retreat to a collective residence called Chinatown. The Chinese found safety in trades in which whites did not disturb them as competitors-laundries and restaurants and as houseboys (Isaacs 1958,115). Those residential districts “became more and more a segregated ghetto that kept the Chinese in one area, and whites out” (Mazumdar 1989,4).
The dark and “exotic” Chinatown intensified the stereotype of Chinese “inscrutability.” In his recollection of his boyhood early in this century in a New Jersey town, writer Robert Lawson described the Chinese as follows:
The Chinese, of course, were by far the most foreign and outlandish. They ran laundries, no work for a man anyway, they had no families or children, they were neither Democrats nor Republicans. They wrote backwards and upside down, with a brush, they worked incessantly night and day, Saturdays and
Sundays, all of which stamped them as the most alien heathen. . . . We knew that they lived entirely on a horrible dish called chopsooey which was composed of rats, mice, cats, and puppydogs (quoted in Isaacs 1958,109).
In this context, the image of the Chinese as the “unassimilable other” and as the Yellow Peril led whites to create Chinese villain characters. The story of Chinese villains in Chinatowns became a popular genre first in magazines and later in films. During the 1920s, American screens were filled with Chinese crime-and-gangster characters. Chief among these villains was arguably the best- remembered figure, Fu Manchu. First gaining popularity in a novel-The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu by the English writer, Sax Rohmer-Fu Manchu became an extraordinary attraction in films, starting in 1929 with The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (Isaacs 1958, 115-16). Sequels of Fu Manchu films appeared: The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu (1930), Daughter of the Dragon (1931), The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), and The Drums of Fu Manchu (serial, 1940).5 As an incarnation of evil challenging the sanity of white civilization, Fu Manchu always miraculously reappeared in the next episode. He vanished when the Chinese commanded general sympathy during World War 11. As we shall see, the Fu Manchu syndrome gives us an insight into the phenomenon of Asians’ portrayals as villains in the Reagan-Bush era, when Asians loomed as “unfair” economic competitors (Hamamoto 1994; Isaacs 1958).

2. Asians Sexually Distorted

Westerners have tried to control and stereotype nonwhites’ sexuality as a form of racial domination. First, sexist and racist stereotypes of “subservient and sexual” Asian women satisfied the needs of Western colonialism. During the colonial period, Westerners developed contrasting images of West and East: “strong,” “rational,” “virtuous” “mature” and “normal” for the West and “weak,” “irrational,”
“depraved,” “childish,” and “abnormal” for the East. The East became the setting for exotic stories in the colonialist era. According to Marlo Praz (1951), “A love of the exotic is usually an imaginative projection of a sexual desire, and the Orient symbolized a type of licentious romantic sexual experience that titillated the European imagination.” These exotic stories incited Westerners to seek colonial adventures, equating Asian women with the Asian continent.
According to Edward Said (1978, 190), what Westerners looked for “was a different type of sexuality,
perhaps more libertine and less guilt-ridden.” “Oriental sex” became a commodity in the mass culture, “with the result that readers and writers could have it if they wished without necessarily going to the Orient” (p. 190). American adoption of this idea is illustrated in Madame Butterfly, popular as a play, an opera, and, in 1915, a narrative film. Madame Butterfly, the prototype of the stereotypical Asian woman, commits suicide after her affair with an American naval officer comes to an end (May 1993,84). This plot has been recycled in the popular culture. In the film Sayonara (1957), a Japanese
woman (Miyoshi Umeki) chooses to kill herself when faced with the prospect of parting with her white
boyfriend (Red Buttons). A recent European musical, “Miss Saigon,” is a Vietnamese version of Madame Butterfly: the narrative structure is the same, only the locale has changed. As the presence of Asian women in a film is to fulfill white men’s sexual desires, when their lovers leave they disappear from a narrative. The Chinese American actress Anna May Wong (1907-1961) commented, “When I die, my epitaph should be she died a thousand deaths. That was the story of my film career. . . . They didn’t know what to do with me at the end, so they killed me off (quoted in Moy 1993,86).
Beside their representations in films, we must note the harshness of the real living conditions of Asian
women. During the early stage of Chinese immigration, the San Francisco press focused on the problem of Chinese prostitution. Stereotyped as immoral and over- sexed, Asian women were a threat to white “purity.” It led to an exclusion of Chinese women. In 1870, “An Act to Prevent the Kidnapping and Importation of Mongolian, Chinese, and Japanese Females for Criminal and Demoralizing Purposes” was passed as one of a series of anti-Chinese laws (Mazumdar 1989,3; Wong 1978, vii). As the immigration of Chinese females was cut off, the disparity in numbers between Chinese men and women
widened. By 1870, the ratio of Chinese American men to women was no less than twelve to one. In 1900, this ratio increased to twenty-six males to one female (Mazumdar
The film The World ofSuzie Wong (1961) is arguably the best-remembered film satisfying the white male fantasy of Asian women as sexual slaves. When Robert Lomax (William Holden) meets Suzie (Nancy Kwan), a Hong Kong hooker, in a bar, she says, “You’re looking for a girl- friend? I’m here for rent for a whole month.” In the final scene, Suzie’s last line symbolizes the subservience of Asian women: “I will love you until you let me go.” The ideology of white racial domination directs this presentation of Asian females as under white male patronage. On’ the other hand, Asian females do not fall in love with Asian males in films: even in modern films such as Year of the Dragon (1989), Rising Sun (1993), and Deadly Target (1994), they fall in love with whites, not with Asians. In Deadly Target, a Chinese American woman who falls in love with a white man says, “I’m kinda safe having you around,” implying that only a white male can protect her from the dangerous Asian gangs.
For Asian men, the sexual stereotype was different. In most cases, Asian men were portrayed as asexual in films, in contrast with the stereotype of black males as “beast-rapists.’” However, regardless of the direction of sexual distortion, these stereotypes ultimately serve the same goal: as abnormalities, minorities should be contained. In the film Broken Blossoms (1919), a Chinese man who falls in love with a white girl is presented as asexual. James Moy describes the Chinese character: “Characterized as dreamy, frail, and sensitive, the ‘Yellow Man’ can offer only a love devoid of sexuality” (Moy 1993,
85). By killing off the lovers in the end, the film warned against the horrors of miscegenation. According to Richard Oehling, most films that dealt with Asian-white relations in the 1920s suggested that “interracial love affairs and marriages cannot work out in the long run. There are no happy endings” (Oehling 1980,187).
This early stereotype of the asexual Asian male has been perpetuated. The famous Chinese detective Charlie Chan, featured in forty-eight films in the 1930s and 1940s, was effeminate and asexual in his walk and gestures. According to Eugene Franklin Wong (1978, 106-8), the motion picture producers, considering public sentiment, were very cautious in the creation of the Oriental who was on the side of the law. Therefore, Chan was made effeminate and comical with his abundance of aphorisms, so that
he would not be rejected by the audience. TV programs such as “Bachelor Father” (1957-1962), “Have Gun Will Travel” (1957-1963) “Bonanza” (1959-1973), “Valentine’s Day” (1964-1965), “Star Trek” (1966-1969), “Highcliffe Manor” ( 1979), “Falcon Crest’’ (1981-1990), “General Hospital” (1985), and “Ohara” (1987-1988) all featured Asians as bachelors. Among these programs in the west-
1989,2-5). erns, Asian bachelors are houseboys without sexuality (Hamamoto 1994, 7-12; James 1991, 164). In modern times, the male protagonist of M. Butterfly (1988) embodies the Western perception and stereotyping of the East as feminine.

3. Asian Americans-Swayed by U.S. International Relations

The year 1924 was a turning point in the portrayal of Asian Americans. With the 1924 Immigration Act, no more Asians were allowed into the United States, and growth of the Asian American community was stopped. Film industry’s interest in Asian alien residents declined and, instead, China and Japan as foreign powers emerged as a theme in Hollywood films (Oehling 1980,183). As we
shall see, fluctuating relationships between the United States and Asian countries affected U.S. treatment of Asian Americans. As a result, Asian Americans have been easy scapegoats whenever the United States clashes with an Asian country. Before 1924, the Chinese were the major incarnations of evil in American media, as seen in Fu Manchu and related figures. When Japan revealed its
expansionist ambitions and invaded China in 1937, the Chinese and Japanese changed places as “the bad guys.” Moreover, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reinforced the bad guy image of Japan (Chin 1973,4344). An opinion poll in July 1942 showed that while only 3 percent of Americans described the Chinese as “cruel,” 56 percent of them applied this adjective to the Japanese (Isaacs 1958, 107). The war ended the career of a relatively positive Japanese American film character, Mr. Moto, a brilliant
and humble sleuth. In its place arose the fanatical kamikaze “Jap” who brutally tortured and raped “white purity” in such diverse war films as Wake Island (1942), The Purple Heart (1944), and Objective Burma (1945) (Woll and Miller 1987,192; Wong 1978).
During World War 11, Japanese Americans suffered ineradicable psychological scars at the hands of the U.S. government. In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. By this order, the civil rights of 120,000 Japanese Americans-77,000 of them U.S.-born citizens-were suspended, and these individuals were evacuated to concentration camps solely due to their Japanese
origin. Upon “clearance,” Japanese American males older than age seventeen were required to sign a loyalty oath. After encampment for up to three years, the detainees were released without apology or compensation. The Japanese community never recovered culturally or economically. What awaited them was racially motivated violence, and their property was rifled, stolen, or sold during their absence (Mazumdar 1989, 10; Hamamoto 1994, 66-75; Matsumoto 1989). However, German and Italian
Americans, whose motherlands fought America and who belonged to the white race, did not experience the same treatment. In propaganda cartoons during the war, while Japanese were described as monkeys, Hitler and Germans were human. For the most part, Germans and Italians were portrayed in films as pitiful, ordinary people who were regrettably misled by dictators while the Japanese were a crazy
subhuman race running wild (Dower 1986; Wong 1978).

On the other hand, “the American people became fascinated by the stubborn and heroic resistance of the Chinese against the better-equipped and better-trained Japanese troops” (Wong 1978,127). The Chinese began to be portrayed as smiling and hardworking peasants, or otherwise favorably in films such as The Good Earth (1937), Daughter of Shanghai (1938), King of Chinatown (1939), Dragon Seed (1944), and Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944) (Woll and Miller 1987, 192; Wong 1978, 136-37). A remark by an American in Thirty Seconds over Tokyo demonstrates American feeling about the Chinese: “You’re our kind of people” (Oehling 1980, 197). During the war, the Office of War Information (Owl) pronounced that the Charlie Chan series was included in the list of official anti-
Japanese films since Chan was regarded as a “good Chinese American” who worked well with the authorities. Chinese Americans began to be regarded as the “ideal American minority”; in contrast with this fact, the very existence of the “good guy” Charlie Chan reminded Americans of “bad guy” Japanese (Chin 1973, 43-46). In the context of this favorable aura, in 1943 the US. Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and established an annual quota of 105 for Chinese immigrants (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 1992, 4). However, an astute scholar named Rose Hum Lee worried about the future of Chinese Americans even in 1944. She noted, “As violently as the Chinese were once attacked, they are now glorified and mounted on a pedestal. It is impossible to predict how lasting this change will be. . . . Largely grounded on the sandy loam of sentimentality, one is left conjecturing what the tone of literature toward the Chinese will be in 1954” (quoted in Isaacs 1958,120).
Her predicted concern was realized. When the Communists took over in China in 1949, fought against
the United States in the Korean War (1950-1953), and dealt “cruelly” with American prisoners, the Chinese became the bad guys again. Again, a series of anti-Chinese communist films were made during the 1950s. Fu Manchu, who died a natural death in movies produced in earlier years, made another of his miraculous reappearances during the 1950s in the form of serial stories in Collier’s Magazine (1957) and in the TV series “The Adventures of Fu Manchu” (1955), which included seventy-eight half-hour episodes, with crueler portrayals than previous ones (Hamamoto 1994, 11 1; Paik 1971,30; Wong 1978,102). As Wong (1978,180) states, “By the end of the 1950s, the industry had clearly re-established the Chinese as America’s main enemy, overshadowing the Russians if only on the basis of race.” In the minds of many Americans, the Chinese were not only inhumane humans but bestial subhumans (Isaacs 1958,108).
In contrast, Japanese became the good guys again after Japan adopted Western democracy following its defeat in World War 11. Especially after the speech by Douglas MacArthur to Congress in 1951, “the Japanese thrift, enterprise, and acumen have been restored to high American regard, Japanese art exhibits draw admiring American audiences, and a visiting company of Kabuki dancers has scored a critical and popular triumph” (quoted in Isaacs 1958, 108 n27). In this favorable atmosphere, the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 was passed finally allowing Japanese to become U.S. citizens (U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights 1992; 4). The cameras began to focus favorably on Japan and Japanese geisha girls who were kind to American GIs in Teahouse of the August Moon (1956) and Sayonara (1957) (Hamamoto 1994, 1 1).8 The Japanese began to be portrayed as less hostile and more human even in World War I1 films such as Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Here to Eternity (1960), and Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). In contrast, from the start of the Korean War (1950) to the shifting of diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing ( 1978), National Geographic “virtually ignored” mainland China. During this period, National Geographic reported on Japan more “than on any other non-western
nation” (Lutz and Collins 1993, 126-29). As seen in the concentration camp experience of the Japanese
Americans, the welfare and the media portrayals of the Asian American community were influenced by the US. relationship with Asian countries.

4. Model Minority Stereotype Since the 1960s

In addition to being victimized by international affairs, Asian Americans were also made into puppets by racial politics. This changed circumstance was brought about in the context of African Americans assertively demanding their civil rights during the 1960s. As a counterblow to the African American attack on the U.S. social system, the power bloc needed Asian Americans to justify African
Americans’ own economic failure. At this time, it seemed that Chinese and Japanese Americans were regarded as one group, under the name of “model minority.” Later, as Korean Americans and Asian Indians were included in the model minority category, it seemed that all Asian American groups were renamed as model minority, a notion used against African and Latino Americans (Espiritu 1992; Omi and Winant 1994).

The 1965 publication of The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, written by then Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s commencement speech at Howard University based on this report sparked a controversy among government officials, civil rights leaders, social scientists, and the public. The so-called Moynihan report attributed the perpetual economic subordination of blacks to their lack of family values (Rainwater and Yancey 1967). Soon afterward, Asian success stories appeared in the media. Examples include “Success Story: Japanese American Style” in The New York Times Magazine (1966) and’ Japanese Americans: Oppression and Success ( 1971), both by William Petersen. The author unanimously attributed
the success to Asian family values and called the Japanese Americans a “model American minority.” Another success story article in US. News 8 World Report (“Success Story of One Minority Group” 1966) begins with the following:
Visit “Chinatown U.S.A.” and you find an important racial minority pulling itself up from hardship and discrimination to become a model of self-respect and achievement in today’s America. At a time when it is being proposed that hundreds of billions be spent to uplift Negroes and other minorities, the nation’s 300,000 Chinese-Americans are moving ahead on their owns-with no help from anyone else. (p. 73)

And the article closes with the following:
At the same time, it must be recognized that the Chinese and other Orientals in California were faced with even more prejudice than faces the Negro today. We haven’t stuck Negroes in concentration camps, for instance, as we did the Japanese in World War 11. “The Orientals came back, and today they have established themselves as strong contributors to the health of the whole community.” (p. 76)

The article contrasts Chinese Americans and blacks. Specifically, it emphasizes the admirable reluctance of Chinese, in contrast with blacks, to receive welfare checks. This idea is captured in the lead: “Still being taught in Chinatown is the old idea that people should depend on their own efforts-not a welfare check-to reach America’s ‘promised land’ ” (p. 73). The comparison between Asians and black‘s seemed to foster conflict between these two minorities. According to Frank Chin (1973,46), some people in Chinatown said that on the same date that the US. News and World Report story appeared, mainstream papers in San Francisco began to report a story about black gangsters killing Chinese grocers.
The appreciation of Asians set the stage for a change in immigration policy. After a long period of restriction on Asian immigration, the Immigration Act of 1965 replaced the national origins system with a fixed annual quota of 20,000 per country, permitting a sizable increase in the influx of Asians (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 1992, 5). Unlike the Chinese and Japanese, most Korean immigrants arrived in the United States after the Immigration Act of 1965; some believe that they were introduced to America to form a buffer zone between wealthy whites and poor blacks after the Watts riots.9

Just as Charlie Chan movies had been used to divide and conquer Japanese and Chinese Americans in the previous generation (see section 3), Flower Drum Song (1961) can be interpreted as a blow to African Americans. In this film, all the Asians rejoice over their identity as Asian “Americans” as they happily sing a song, “Chop Suey”-a mixed Chinese dish in American style, invoking the concept of Americanized Chinese. This film projects Asians as a “humble and quiet” model minority struggIing to assimilate into white America without asking for anything. All Asians in the film are middle or upper middle-class, reflecting the realization of the “American Dream.” Even the illegal immigrants are portrayed favorably. What is lacking is the reality: no racism exists in the film. Despite the depiction of Asians as a model minority, public and Hollywood attitudes toward Asian Americans had not changed. Except for Flower Drum Song, Asians were still portrayed in negative and misleading ways throughout the 1960s and 1970s in films and TV programs, such as “The Hawaiians” (1970), “Hawaii Five-0’’
(TV series, 1968-1980), and “Mission: Impossible” (TV se- ries, 1966-1973). According to Wong (1978, 210-13), Hollywood had already begun its “renewed propensity to depict Asians as illegalists” with gangland connections in the 1970s. In marked contrast, black characters began to be depicted as ordinary persons, as Hollywood began to acknowledge black audiences. However, Asian Americans,
a smaller audience with less purchasing power, were not recognized by the media industry. Only the news media occasionally reported Asian success stories, seemingly always with the aim to divide and conquer the racial minorities.

5. The Reagan-Bush Era

To understand race relations in the 1980s, we must first examine the political and economic changes that started more than a decade earlier. Regionally, jobs and industries in the Frostbelt, formerly the industrial hub of America, were uprooted and moved to the Sunbelt. Structurally, the U.S. economy shifted from manufacturing to high-tech industry, eliminating many workingclass jobs. In the inter-
national market, U.S. manufacturers lost out to their competitors in Germany and Japan, with these countries reemerging as economic superpowers, significantly increasing the U.S. trade deficit. Furthermore, U.S. influence dwindled with the rise to power of anti-American nation-
alist and Communist regimes in the Third World. Defeat in Vietnam and the Iran hostage crisis, in particular, damaged national prestige and fostered xenophobia. It was in this atmosphere that Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidential election, promising a Reagan Revolution to “revive a great America” (Omi and Winant 1994,114-15).
During the Reagan administration, economic dislocation continued, monopoly capitalism grew, and the concentration of wealth narrowed. Between 1977 and 1989, 60 percent of the increase in after-tax income accrued to the wealthiest 1 percent of American households; the poorest 40 percent suffered a decrease in inflation-adjusted income. During the same period, the salaries of top executives increased dramatically compared to those of their employees, from 35 to 120 times the average workers’ wages (Robinson 1993,75). Blacks seemed to suffer most from the deregulation policy of the Reagan administration. During the period 1982-1989, 131 factories in Los Angeles, the majority
of whose employees were blacks, closed and moved to the Third World. This move cost 124,000 jobs. In 1992, U.S. Representative Maxine Waters claimed that about 40 to 50 percent of blacks in Los Angeles were unemployed (Fiske 1994,153; Waters 1992,26).
However, the conservatives saw a return to traditional values as a cure-all for these socioeconomic problems. From 1980 to 1996, all Republican presidential candidates put family values at the center of their campaigns. Their emphasis on individual responsibility reflected the view that the state should no longer assume primary responsibility for the amelioration of socioeconomic problems (Fiske 1994, 114). In addition, issues of race were revived in the form of a backlash. Conservatives questioned the value of the existing social welfare policy, reopened the debate on race, and blamed the government for “throwing good money after bad” (Omi and Winant 1994, 116). Such books as Losing Ground: American Social Poky, 1950-1 980 by conservative theorist Charles Murray (1984) supported the Reagan assertion that social welfare programs based on race had created massive socioeco- nomic problems. According to Murray,

My proposal for dealing with the racial issue in social welfare is to repeal every bit of legislation and reverse every court decision that in any way requires, recommends, or awards differential treatment according to race. . . . Race is not a morally admissible (sic) reason for treating one person differently from another. Period. (p. 223)
Again, Asian Americans became embroiled in a racial “divide and conquer” policy. The laissez-faire economy of the 1980s promoted the myth of the self-made man in the name of “entrepreneurialism.” Vietnamese shrimp wholesalers, Korean greengrocers, and Chinese computer whizzes were recognized as the epitome of “family values” (Hamamoto 1994, 198). Asians’ “promotion” thrust blacks to the “bottom rung of the ethnic ladder” (Daniels and Kitano 1970,81) and brought envy and antagonism from blacks against Asians. The speeches of two Republican politicians in Los Angeles after the riots in
1992 placed Asian Americans on the opposite side of African Americans. Dan Quayle said, “I believe the lawless social anarchy which we saw is directly related to the breakdown of family structure, personal responsibility and social order in too many areas of our society. For the poor the situation compounded by a welfare ethos that impedes individual efforts to move ahead in society” (quoted
in Fiske 1994,68-69). In a similar vein, Pat Buchanan said, “There were the brave people of Koreatown who took the worst of those L.A. riots, but still live the family values we treasure, and who still believe deeply in the American dream” (quoted in Fiske 1994, 56). Asian Americans were made puppets in racial politics without their consent.
At the same time, the image of Asian Americans was adversely affected by the trade struggle between Asia and the United States. The domestic economic ills were attributed to “unfair” trade practices of Asian countries such as Japan and the “tigers”-South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. A nationwide survey conducted in 1982 concluded that 44 percent of Americans blamed the coun-
try’s economic woes “almost completely” or “very much” on competition from Japanese corporations (Espiritu 1992, 138). In 1984, the U.S. trade deficit with Japan was $37 billion, and that with Canada was $20 billion; however, Canada was not a target of resentment (Omi and Winant 1994, 202 n7). During this period, the Japanese purchase of Rockefeller Center, MCA, CBS Records, and
Columbia Pictures received media attention and caused public protest. On the other hand, European and
Canadian ownership of U.S. real estate was condoned. For example, in 1985, the Dutch held $35 billion worth of U.S. real estate, and the British owned $44 billion (Espiritu 1992, 139; Funabiki 1992; Morley and Robins 1995, (149-52). Typical of expressions of racial views of Asians, Waldemar Januszczak once remarked that, like Europeans, “Canadians, after all, are just like Americans, only less so. The Japanese, according to the occidental popular imagination are aliens from the East who are probably trying to take over the West” (quoted in Morley and Robins 1995, 158). Both labor leaders and executives placed racist blame on Japan. For example, Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca ignited blacks’ anti-Asian sentiment by claiming that while Chrysler ran auto plants in downtown Detroit where
many African Americans lived, Japanese auto makers were discriminating against blacks by building plants in suburban and rural areas where blacks rarely lived. In short, even the Japanese economic investment in America was viewed in terms of racial ideology. Subsequent to Iacocca’s
claim, the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Benjamin J. Hooks, urged blacks to boycott Japanese auto- mobiles (Espiritu 1992,138; Hamamoto 1994,80).
The media played a large role in stirring up anti- Japanese sentiment, using a military metaphor. For the
most part, Japanese businesses and people were described as “sinister marauders,” seeking to make up for “their losses during the war” (Funabiki 1992, 13). For example, the following remarks adorned the cover of The New York Times Magazine (28 July 1985) below a graphic of the nationalistic “red sun” indicator for Japan: “Today, 40 years after the end of World War 11, the Japanese are on the move again in one of history’s most brilliant commercial offensives, as they go about dismantling American industry. Whether they are still only smart, or have finally learned to be wiser than we, will be tested in the next 10 years. Only then will we know who finally won the war.” In the related article, “The Danger from Japan,” by Theodore H. White (1985), two photos were juxtaposed, showing people shouting with their hands raised. One was of American workers demonstrating against the loss of jobs;
the other was of Japanese workers cheering at a training school for managers. The aim of this illustration was to suggest that the first photo was the result of the second. In a cover story of The Atlantic Monthly, “Containing Japan: Japan’s Runaway Economy Will Harm the Rest of the
World If Some Limits Aren’t Set,” James Fallows (1989) described the Japanese as having “destructive compulsions.’’ He accused Japan of conducting “one-sided trading.” A survey taken on 7 August 1989 showed that Japan was feared more than any other country, even the former archvillian, Russia, by U.S. citizens: the reason was economic competition (Chang 1993, 14; Morley and Robins 1995,158).
The anti- Japanese sentiment in the press spills over into the writing on the Asian American community. For example, under the headline, “Asian Invasion,” The Daily Breeze (Torrance, California, 24 March 1991) featured a story on the growth of the region’s Asian American community (Funabiki 1992, 14). Asian Americans are lumped together with Asians and are the direct recipients of anti- Asian sentiment. According to a report published by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1992), Japan bashing by
American leaders in diverse sectors has invoked envy and led to anti-Asian violence in America. On 19 June 1982, Chinese American Vincent Chin was killed by whites who mistook him for a Japanese man. Throughout the 1980s, this kind of violence continued around the country, especially in southern California. In 1986, the U.S. Justice Department reported that hate crimes committed against Asian Americans had risen by 62 percent (Espiritu 1992; Hamamoto 1994, 167).”
Nevertheless, the criminal image of Asians continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Since the early years of their immigration, Asian Americans have been seen largely as criminals, such as tong warriors and prostitutes, and such criminalization was a means to justify their exclusion. The factual programs disseminated the criminal image of Asians as a new threat that had to be contained. For example, in a special TV program, “The New Godfathers,” (1993), after announcing that a global wave of terror was attacking the United States, Gerald Rivera, the host, emphasized the Hong Kong-based Triads and the
Japanese Yakuza as “especially fearsome” (Hamamoto 1994, 180-81). In a documentary, “Asian Gangs: Terror in the Streets” (1992), Little Saigon, a Vietnamese residence in Orange County, California, was described as a hangout for gangsters. Detective Marcus Frank was interviewed,
saying that “of all the street gangs out there, there is no question in my mind that the Indochinese street gangs are by far the most criminally sophisticated element we have ever seen in this country” (quoted in Hamamoto 1994, 183). Little Saigon was thus a renewed version of criminal- ized Chinatown.
The entertainment media are the spearhead in spreading the Asian criminal theme. Today, when one
reads the Movie Guide pages in TV Guide describing crime movies set in Los Angeles, one will probably see Asians cast as criminals. For example, on the evening of 3 January 1996, four films showing Asians aired on television, all of which were gangster films: Bloodsport (1988), The Protector (1985), both on TBS, and Deadly Target (1994) and Blue Tiger (1994), both on HBO. In Bloodsport,
Jean-Claude Van Damme fights with an Asian martial arts player who is described as “cruel.” In The Protector, two New York policemen, one Asian and the other white, go to Hong Kong to fight a criminal organization. In Deadly Target, a white Hong Kong policeman comes to Los Angeles to arrest Wu Chang, a drug dealer and gangster from Hong Kong. Throughout the film, every Asian is a gangster. In Blue Tiger, all Asians are gang members except for a policeman. After arresting the Asian killer, the Japanese American policeman says, “You know what really crawls my butt. It’s assholes like you come over here and gives Asians like me a bad rap.” In his discourse, it seems that all Asian immigrants are criminals.
In Year of the Dragon ( 1985), Chinatown is a hotbed of vice and crime, and a white male is a crime solver. The white detective Stanley White (Mickey Rourke) says, “The Chinese are always involved in something-never involved in nothing.” Still, the major Asian female character is the white’s mistress. Only dark images of Chinatown, such as a gambling parlor, a sweatshop, and gang shootings, are
found in this film.I2 In both fictional and factual programs dealing with Asian gangsters, it was assumed that they have connections with secret international criminal organizations uniting Asians here and abroad, further “foreignizing” Asian Americans. In this scenario, Hong Kong and Los Angeles were two strongholds for this secret society.
In both factual and fictional programs, by criminalizing Asian Americans, white racial superiority, in the guise of law enforcement, was justified. The inferential theme under those programs and films is that Asians are undesirables who bring vice and crime with their “unfair” trade.

6. Asian Americans As the”0ther”: The Practice of Yellowfacing

Even after 150 years of an Asian American presence on U.S. soil, on TV they are still portrayed as “foreigners” who speak pidgin English, preserve only their “old country traditions,” and refuse to assimilate into American culture. Charlie Chan’s famous formula, “Confucius say . . . ” leads the audience to think that all Asians are mysterious. In TV programs such as “Happy Days” (1974-1984), “Mr. T. and Tina” (1976), “Gung Ho” (1986-1987), and “Davis Rules” (1991-1992) and in the
film Falling Down (1992), Asian Americans are portrayed as new immigrants speaking accented English (Hamamoto 1994,12). This phenomenon reflects the fact that the white-dominated media ignore the history of Asian Americans and regard them as foreign.
In the ABC sitcom “AU-American Girl” (1994), the main narrative structure is based on binary opposition between old country values and American values, represented in the struggle between a mother and a daughter who are intolerant of each other’s values. Through the emphasis on the differences between the two sets of values, Asian Americans are seen as all the more alien. The 4
January 1996 episode of “Murder, She Wrote,” set in Japan, continually referred to outmoded aspects of
Japanese life. In it, the marriage of a CEO’s son has been contracted since his birth. A rickshaw is shown as a vehicle. Since there is a reference to baseball player Hideo Nomo, the setting is contemporary, but the drama is filled with old Japanese practices. Asia is still regarded as a “different” place.
According to a study of soap operas by Cathy James, many Asian American characters appear mainly as “ethnic background scenery” when the white lead characters need a secret “hideout.” For example, on the soap opera " As the World Turns” (1983), Barbara Stenbeck, disguised as a man, hid out in a room above a male Japanese health spa. Most of the scenes in the bathhouse featured Japanese American men in the hot tub conversing with each other. They minded their own business, and none of
them was interested in Barbara Stenbeck. It was the perfect refuge, complete with secretive people (James 1991, 151-52). Asians shown in the film Another 48 H (1990) include a man and his wife who run a hot el in Chinatown, two arguing men, and a man who is complaining to policemen. They speak only Chinese, with subtitles, supplying an ethnic aura-but not of the language value as English.
The popular TV series “Kung Fu” (1972-1975) forced the “inscrutability” of Asians-solving problem with Zen and mystic martial arts. Even the modem Asian American cop in “Ohara” (1987-1988) solves crime through Zen (Hamamoto 1994, 12). In the film Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985), the Korean martial arts master Chiun watches TV sitting on a mat made of tiger’s skin. In The Karate Kid, Part II (1986), the Japanese karate master is seen catching flies with chopsticks In the Rising Sun (1993), Sean Connery, who is excluded from the LAPD because he is regarded as having sold himself to Japan, frequently talks in fortune cookie slogans, such as “Hide a sword in a smile” and “Beat the grass to startle the snakes,” reminding the audience of mysterious Asia.
The stereotype of inscrutable or foreign Asians is tied to their use as comic relief. In Sixteen Candles (1983) Chinese exchange student, with his pidgin English and strange behavior, looks not like a normal person but an extraterrestrial. His name is Long Duk Dong, soun like “long duck dung.” “Dung” is slang for excrement. “dong” is slang for penis. His name is also associated “ding-dong,” which is slang for crazy. In Gung Ho (1989) the Japanese take off their shoes in front of the red carpet that was put out in the airport to welcome them. In Collision Course (1987), a Japanese policeman provides comic relief with his accented English. Entering T's (Jay Leno) apartment, Oshima (Pat Morita) flinches. He asks, “What’re you doing now? . . . Take off shoes. ! respect for house.” Finding some dirty fur on the floor
puts on his shoes again, saying, “I think better show respect for foot.” In many scenes, Oshima is funny because of his exaggeratedly Japanese behavior and broken English. In The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu (1980), followers of Fu Manchu jump up and down, clapping hands in an extreme exaggeration.
Aside from all these stereotypes of Asian Amen it is difficult to find Asians in the media. Asian leading
roles are given to white actors, and Asian actors play the marginal roles.” In Hollywood, there has been a standing practice of “yellowfacing”-casting white men to play Asians by the application of tape to the temples nd cheekbones. This practice has its origins in the American theater. When a drama called for black charaters, white actors played blacks to avoid physical contact with them (Moss 1991, 124). This practice lingered in motion picture era and was applied to any nonwhite character. Even though Asian character serials such as Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan were an important stock in the American motion picture industry in the first half of the twentieth century, Asian actors were given only marginal
roles (Wong 1978, 103).14

The practice of yellowfacing was not applied to subservient female roles. When the role called for a housekeeper or the object of white male sexual desire, it was assigned to an Asian female actor. However, when the role portrayed an honorable Asian woman, white female actors substituted: Louise Rainer in The Good Earth (1937), Katharine Hepburn in Dragon Seed (1944), and Jennifer Jones in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955).
There are several excuses for the perpetuation of this practice. During an era of supposedly pro-Chinese policy, the film The Good Earth (1937) was produced, and a vast talent search was initiated for an all-Chinese cast. However, Paul Muni, a white, was given the male leading role with the excuse of a dearth of good Asian male actors. The MGM staff did find a female Asian for the leading role, but the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association stepped in and replaced her with Louise Rainer, a white, to avoid a violation of the antimiscegenation law (Paik 1971, 31). Even though the Supreme Court ruled the anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional in 1967, it still influenced television media. The television soap opera, “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” (1967-1973), was supposed to show the first interracial love scene between an American man and a Eurasian woman. After the show’s premiere, CBS, bombarded by too many protests from viewers, forced the writer to change the story (Hamamoto 1994, 39; LaGuardia 1983, 38). In the 1971 NBC TV series, the title character Charlie Chan was played by a white actor, Ross Martin. NBC TV vice president David Tebet gave the excuse that “no
Chinese could speak English in an accent understandable to the U.S. audience” (Choy 1978,150).
The TV program “Kung Fu” (1972-1975) could have produced the first Asian heroic character played by an Asian actor. Action star Bruce Lee originally was to have starred in “Kung Fu” but was later denied the role because it was assumed that audiences were not ready to watch an Asian physically humiliating whites. Instead, the hero was presented as half white, half Asian, and was played by David Carradine (Hamamoto 1994, 60). Yellowfacing was still prevalent in Hollywood in the 1980s. In The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu (1980) and Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985), white ac-
tors played the Asian rolest5 Associating visibility in the media with “love,” independent filmmaker Loni Ding (1991, 48) talks about the power of the media: “possibly they have this power because we empower them with our attention. Someone once startled me with the proposal that if you were to gaze
at anybody long enough, you could become enamored with them. . . . Perhaps the gaze of the camera does the same.” Accepting this premise for the moment, the fact that Asians are invisible denies them the opportunity to be loved by the audience. Furthermore, when Asians are portrayed as villains, prostitutes, or perpetual foreigners, they are hated rather than loved by the audience. In short, the
psychological function of the “other” is to be hated by ‘‘us’’ as an embodiment of alien culture and a possible threat to our “norm.”

7. Conclusion

The Asian American experience can be epitomized as a process of assimilation into American culture, from Asian immigrants’ ordeal when they first arrived here to their adaptation to racial domination. As immigrant laborers, Asian Americans have suffered from racist attacks by nativists whenever they have been seen as a threat to nativists’ livelihood and whenever their motherlands and the United States have come into conflict. As a comparatively small racial minority in America, Asian Americans
have been “inexorably entangled in a web of economic, political, and social complexities and conflicts” (Wong 1978, 187). As Hamamoto (1994, 1) puts it, “the simultaneous necessity and undesirability of Asian immigrant labor is a crucial political-economic contradiction that informs much of the past and present experience of Asians in the United States.” Compared to what they endured a century ago, Asian Americans today are subject to stereotyping and life experiences that are less intense but,
amazingly, similar in kind.
Overt racism, such as public exclusion and expulsion directed at early Chinese immigrants, and spiteful
stereotypes, such as Fu Manchu, have gradually disappeared. However, inferential racism hidden behind rationality is on the increase through the control of “illegal” immigration, welfare reform law, and the stereotypes in seemingly innocuous films. Racial ideology is articulated in and through portrayals of race in the media. These portrayals have taught both Asian Americans and nativists lessons about who Asian Americans were and who they should be. In addition, with the development of new
video technology such as cable and home video and television’s increasing reliance on reruns of feature films, audiences have greater exposure to the accumulation of Asian American stereotypes. For example, as Norman Denzin (1995, 11 1) notes, “In the early 1970s the Chan movies would become staples on American television and suddenly found (sic) themselves the center of a new cult,
part of the general craze for nostalgia of the thirties and forties,” These days, not only Chan films but also others are easily available in any video rental stores.

It can be said that the foremost goal of the media is simply to make a profit by reaching as large an audience as possible. When networks buy programs or movies from Hollywood producers, they decide whether to underwrite these projects based on the marketability of these programs “in such a way as to ensure a sizable share of the audience” (Schulze 1990, 361). The sponsors favor not only the largest but also the most desirable audience-the young and affluent. By this mechanism, the media alienate
and neglect the less desirable audiences-the old, the poor, and ethnic minorities such as Asian Americans (Bagdikian 1992). One of the criteria for marketable pro-grams is familiarity: a program must be familiar “by its reference to the instantly recognizable” (Schulze 1990, 362). Television continuously offers viewers images and myths that are already familiar in structure and form, such
as whites defending the community against Indians and, more recently, against hordes of “aliens” from the Third World. In this process, the stereotypes of specific groups are reproduced and recycled forever (Fiske 1987; Fiske and Hartley 1978; Mellencamp 1990). For these reasons, it is difficult for producers to broadcast images that are unfamiliar to the mainstream audience. According to film director Wayne Wang, it was impossible for him to persuade Hollywood producers to fund his Asian-cast films (Sakamoto 1991). The absence or limited influence of Asian American producers and writers
in the culture industry is partly responsible for the perpetuation of Asian stereotypes. Simply blaming the culture industry for its stereotyping cannot challenge and change long-standing conventions. Rather, the attempts to deal with Asian stereotypes and undcrrepresentation have come from the Asian American community itself. Some of these independent films and their filmmakers are Wayne
Wang’s Chan Is Missing (1981), Spencer Nakasako’s Monterey’s Boat People (1982), Karen Ishizuka and Robert Nakamura’s Fool’s Dance (1983), Steven Okazaki’s Unfinished Business (1984), Wayne Wang’s Dim Sum (1985), Loni Ding’s Color of Honor (1987), Christine Choy and Renee Tajima’s Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1988), and Wayne Wang’s Eat a Bowl of Tea (1989) (Yee 1991,251).
Although these independent films have limited influence on Hollywood productions, filmmakers with a
track record, even in the “indies,” are more likely to break into Hollywood. The film industry tends to be cautious and looks for “a sure thing” in its screenplays and personnel. The filming of Joy Luck Club (1993) by Wayne Wang was possible only because the original book was a huge bestseller and Wang was already an experienced director (Sakamoto 1991). One is reminded that the filming of Flower Drum Song (1961) with an all-Asian cast was possible only because it had established itself as a successful musical and best-selling novel (Chin 1991, 144). Considering these facts, Asian Americans need to participate more in the culture industry.
However, these few films without stereotypes will not solve the entire problem. The deeper cause is indifference or outright hostility toward multiculturalism, despite the official rhetoric that the United States is a nation of immigrants. In October 1994, a curriculum guide titled National Standards for United States History: Exploring the American Experience was released by the UCLA National
Center for History for the public schools. It included “minorities and women who have been omitted from tradition toward multiculturalism. Conservatives criticized the guide in that it “excludes white male heroes and emphasizes the negative in American history” (“Blueprint of History” 1994, A22). That the guide was finally rejected indicates there is a long and winding road ahead to a multi- cultural society.
The lack of multiculturalism breeds misunderstanding of racial reality, racial stereotypings, and the racist violence onto the minorities. Asian Americans do not share a common origin: for example, Koreans, Indians, and Filipinos are different in race, language, religion, and culture. In addition, not all of them are recent immigrants, as so many Americans assume. Many Asian American families have been in the United States for more than 100 years. Despite this, Asian Americans are still considered as the Asian “other,” being made the easy target of anti-Asian violence, such as in the Vincent Chin case. Ironically,
Asian stereotypes and anti-Asian violence promote pan- Asian American ethnicity. As Yen Le Espiritu (1992, 134) put it, “Because the public does not usually distinguish among Asian subgroups, anti-Asian violence concerns the entire group-cross-cutting class, cultural, and generational divisions.”
I believe the current changes in race discourse come from our acknowledgment of the past because, as E.H. Carr (1961, 69) remarked in his book What is History?, understanding the society of the past is the prerequisite to the mastery over the society of the present.” As we review the history of Asian and Asian American stereotypes and life experiences, we see that history not only produced the present but continues “to function as constraints and determinations on discursive articulation” ( Grossberg 1996a,
148). However, as Hall has aptly noted, “People make history but in conditions not of their own making” (quoted in Grossberg 1996b, 163). Despite adversities, Asian Americans will create a new history in race discourse, leading toward a more equal society.

Doobo Shim is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Journalism and Mass
Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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