Week 3: Race, Space, and Nation

(On Ngai's Impossible Subjects Introduction and Part 1
Kim's "The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans"
and De Genova's "Latino and Asian Racial Formations at the Frontiers of US Nationalism)

The readings of this week collectively accounted for the historical context of contemporary racialization. The relationship and dynamic between various ethnic groups and the state that we see today did not develop over night. They are products that were deliberately created by the government and the "white" society to keep other races 'in place' (I do not agree with or endorse this phrase at all. I only mean to speak from the 'oppressing/dominant' party's perspective. No race belongs to a particular level of the hierarchy.)

De Genova focuses on the triangulation of White, Black, and Red, referring to Native Americans (also discusses about Asian American and Latino later). It was interesting to read De Genova's comparison between Black and Red, different treatments by the White, and consequential place in society. Right from the beginning, De Genova puts Black and Red in different contexts: "racism were devised not singularly around the enslavement of Africans and the denigration of racial Blackness but also by the genocidal dispossession and colonization of American Indians" (no page number on print out. First pg). Slightly on a side note, I enjoyed De Genova's text specifically for such succinct phrases. He uses words, such as enslavement, denigration, genocidal dispossession, and colonization, that are powerful enough to speak for themselves and explain a lot. Back to the comparison between Red and Black, De Genova thoroughly supports his argument that both Black and Red were and perhaps are, though differently, racially mistreated. He maintains that the Native Americans were considered annihilated. This "ideological 'removal' of the Indians likewise signals an analogous collusion with that distinctive historical amnesia [...] reinforced the myth that the North American continent had really been empty all along [...] rightful and preordained inheritance of the U.S. 'nation'" (second pg). Essentially, the White denies Red's existence. On the other hand, the Black are "fully encompassed within an "American" social order of white power and prestige" that "their own cultural specificities, any shred of Africanity, had been effectively obliterated" (third pg). Unlike Red, who are denied existence, Black do not have their own identity. De Genova continues to give an overview of past laws (People v. Hall caught my attention the most) to state that "such intimate entanglements between racial formations and the state thus remind us that all racial identities are always preeminently political identities and, moreover, U.S. nationalism itself to be a racial formation." (second to last page before Notes).

Kim and Ngai also write about immigration laws that reinforced racialization in the past. Kim emphasizes the triangulation of Asian American in reference to Black. In World Culture: Asian Pacific American, I learned about the concept of 'model minority' and how such attribute of Asian American has allowed White to chastise Black and consider them even more inferior. Kim asks in her conclusion, "Must Asian Americans still attempt to be White in order to get ahead?" This question also brings awareness to "the impact of each group's empowerment strategies upon the relative positions of other subordinated groups" (130). In note 107, Kim gives an example of the position of Black in relation to Japanese when the law rewarded Japanese American but slighted Black for the same action. While both De Genova and Kim focuses on one racial group (perhaps their own) in relation to Black and White, Ngai gives a relatively objective historical overview of immigration laws. Prior to the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1994, there were no restrictions for immigration. The law had many consequences and Ngai analyzes and accounts the historical trajectory of immigration policy that followed the restrictions.