The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans: How Claire Jean Kim’s argument helped increase the knowledge of the inequality of Asian Americans by “going beyond black and white.”
The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans: How Claire Jean Kim’s argument helped increase the knowledge of the inequality of Asian Americans by “going beyond black and white.”
Throughout this article, I will dive into what really is involved in the whole idea of “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans,” and what that really means to non-Asian American peoples. As there is a lack of understanding and knowledge of Asian Americans and the racial triangulation that they face, particularly stress in the lack of understanding between blacks and whites. I want to bring attention to Claire Jean Kim’s argument that Asian Americans occupy a different group of positions relative to blacks and whites, across multiple different dimensions, ultimately resulting in a racialized experience of Asian Americans. Racial Triangulation uses two processes to reinforce white power in privilege. This can be described in simpler terms as a dominant group (which are the whites in this case) valorizes the subordinate group (the Asian Americans), relative to another subordinate group (Blacks) involving cultural and racial grounds in order to dominate both groups. Ultimately, Asian Americans are triangulated between African Americans and whites, therefore leading us to the quote I want to really focus on, “going beyond black and white.”
The phrase “going beyond black and white” can be interpreted in many different ways, depending on who is reading it. Through Kim’s “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans,” she says that the phrase “going beyond black and white” must be looked at from a racial perspective. Kim describes the two main approaches that scholars have adopted when looking at and interpreting this phrase- the first examines the creation and characterization of racial categories at open-ended processes that result differently for each group. The second approach emphasizes the ordering of groups into privilege and ranking the Whites on top, Blacks on the bottom, and all of the other groups falling in between. This is a direct example of the triangulation of Asian Americans that Kim stresses- many people focus too hard on the Black and White and leave Asian Americans out of the topic of discussion when it comes to racial subjects. The shortcomings of both of these approaches remained unfilled, as Kim implies. With Kim suggesting that both of these two approaches to interpreting the phrase “beyond black and white” are in part unfulfilled, I believe that she had a large influence on the understanding and implication behind the phrase’s true meaning and motif.
Photo derived from Kim, C. “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans,” Politics and Society, 27 (1), 1999. This photo represents the Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans who are tunneled in the middle of blacks and whites or a blur between inferior and superior.
Racial Triangulation tends to occur by means of one of two types of very similar processes. First, by the processes of “relative valorization.” Relative valorization occurs when group A (whites) valorizes subordinate group B (Asian Americans) relative to subordinate group C (blacks) involving racial grounds. Second, by processes of “civic ostracism.” Civic ostracism occurs when a dominant group A (whites) constructs subordinate group B (Asian Americans) as foreign and non-familiar with whites on racial matters. This process tends to isolate Asian Americans from the body politic and civic membership, really resulting in racial segregation. Both of these processes aim to single out Asian Americans, or better said, tend to avoid looking “beyond black and white.”
Interrupting this racial triangulation is crucial to the future development of the subject. Kim is providing her insight on racial triangulation of Asian Americans in hopes to interrupt it. Kim suggests the most striking feature of racial triangulation of Asian Americans is its historical persistence. The racial triangulation of Asian Americans has been going on since the mid-1800s, and yet still persists.
Throughout this period in the 21st century, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, we saw the rise in anti-Asian violence movements. Asian Americans were experiencing a rise in racial issues associated with violence and harassment during the covid pandemic in the United States. During the time of the pandemic, Asian Americans received even more levels of hatred and racism as Donald Trump described covid as the “Chinese virus,” which in turn led to extreme amounts of anti-Asian hate, especially online. This sort of diminished the said “triangulation” of Asian Americans for a period of time as they were seen as the inferior focus, receiving terrible amounts of hatred and racism.
This photo was derived from https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/03/a-long-history-of-bigotry-against-asian-americans/. Asian Americans are protesting the discrimination that they faced during the recent Covid pandemic. Protests were held all around areas of the United States.
In the book, “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans,” Kim brings up the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. She discusses the importance and effect of this movement, really focusing on whether this movement put a colorblindness era on America, or perhaps did it generate norms of colorblindness that mask racial domination. Kim supports that idea by mentioning that a lot of mainstream scholars believe that the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s influenced the United States as it helped transform it into a partially colorblind society. By doing so, discriminatory barriers were removed to political participation. These mainstream scholars believe that colorblindness is a set of norms rather than a social factor- this set of norms demonstrates the continued patterns of white dominance in the United States.
Asian American triangulation is present and has been present, in the United States for centuries. Asian Americans often find themselves blurred between the said “superior” group (whites) and the “inferior” group, blacks. Kim stresses the importance of looking beyond just black and white- rather look at the grey area in the middle, for that area is often neglected of the attention it deserves. To do so, we must go beyond the Black and White opposition and do much more than chase racial trajectories. Asian Americans have been triangulated between blacks and whites since the beginning of their arrival in the United States. Becoming more sensitive to subordinate groups will allow us to gain knowledge and learn more about Asian Americans and the racial triangulation of Asian Americans between Blacks and Whites in the United States.
