Announcements Papers back Tues Midterm study guide available Tues No class Th 1/3 Midterm Exam T 10/15 Community Engagement Papers!

Describe event Relate to key themes, questions, readings of class How does this event present a sense of Asian

American identity and community? How is it an attempt by Asian Americans to make home in San Diego?

Yellow PowerWho Killed Vincent Chin?

Politics & Identity Identity Politics

Your social identity determines your politics Continuing logic of racialization ALL

people of color are the same Politics of Identity

Challenging logic of racialization we are working together in response to hegemony

Choosing to identify with each other and work together in political projects because of shared social positions and experience

Politics of Identity From Oriental to Yellow Power to

Third World Front SFSU strikes as moment to

(re)create Asian American identity

Rejecting being labeled as Oriental Oriental as term that implies

all Asians are the same Embrace of black power model

But not all Asians are “yellow”

Recognition of solidarity with other minority groups because of issues of center & periphery Third World Front

Third World Alliances 1st world – developed

capitalist nations; US & Western Europe

2nd world – developed socialist nations; USSR & PRC

3rd world – newly decolonized, developing/underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, & Latin America

Third World Front recognition that racialization internationally and capitalist expansion affects domestic racial hegemonies

Representatives from AA movement, Black Panthers, & Raza Movement asserting

TWLF

QUESTION 1

Who was Vincent Chin? Why was his life and death pivotal to Helen Zia’s decision to become a political activist in the Asian American community?

Who was Vincent Chin?

Justice for Vincent Chin Holding Ebens & Nitz accountable

Discrepancy of punishment for white plaintiffs versus African American (Zia 60)

Insisting on diversity of Asian America Not all Asians are the same (Zia 63)

Engaging in situational political mobilization (66) “American Citizens for Justice” de-emphasizes it as solely

an “Asian” concern Rejecting silence & asserting that Asian Americans

experience racism Disrupting the black-white paradigm (Zia 72)

Analyzing relationship between anti-Asian violence & the economy (75) Another version of ethnic antagonism

Deindustrialized Detroit“At first, the companies blamed the workers for incompetence and malaise, for wanting too much in exchange for too little. The workers, in turn, pointed to decrepit factories and machines that hadn’t been upgraded since WWII, profits that had been squandered and not reinvested in plants and people. The government was faulted for the usual reasons. Before long, however, they all found a common enemy to blame: the Japanese” (Zia 57) Cheap Chinese workers from 1880s

vs cheap Japanese cars of 1980s = racialization and capitalism

1970s-80s Backlash Economic cycle of boom & bust blamed on radical

movements of 1960s; lower profits blamed on: Increased protections & wages for workers Too much democracy for Americans versus decrease in

corporate power “The ensuing corporate campaign was a ‘one-sided

class war’: plant closures in U.S. industries and transfer of production overseas, massive layoffs in remaining industries, shifts of capital investment from one region of the country to other regions and other parts of the globe, and demands by corporations for concessions in wages and benefits from workers in nearly every sector of the economy” (Omatsu 66)

Who killed the Asian American movement?

According to Glenn Omatsu, who are Asian American neoconservatives and what role did they play in diminishing the Asian American Movement?

“Are the ideas of the movement alive today, or have they atrophied into relics – the curiosities of a bygone era of youthful and excessive idealism?” (Omatsu 57)