Active Outline

General Information

Course ID (CB01A and CB01B)
ASAMD011.
Course Title (CB02)
Asian Americans and Racism
Course Credit Status
Credit - Degree Applicable
Effective Term
Fall 2023
Course Description
This ethnic studies course focuses on the status and experiences of Asian Americans in U.S. history and in contemporary times to analyze the concept of race, processes of racialization, theories of racism, forms of racial subordination, and the practices of anti-racism. Using a framework of racial relationality, the course explores the dynamics of anti-blackness and white dominance in the imaginative and institutional formations of Asian America. Key themes include labor and global capitalism, Orientalism and imperialism, immigration and exclusion, gender and sexuality, citizenship and nation, "good"/"bad" minorities, and assimilationist thinking.
Faculty Requirements
Course Family
Not Applicable

Course Justification

This course meets general education requirements for ý College, CSU, and IGETC. It fulfills an elective requirement for the Certificate of Achievement in Asian American Studies. This course is UC and CSU transferable. This course introduces students to Asian American Studies by focusing on historical and contemporary processes of differential racialization that have created racial categories in the U.S. and subordinated groups such as Asian Americans among other racialized minorities.

Foothill Equivalency

Does the course have a Foothill equivalent?
No
Foothill Course ID

Course Philosophy

Formerly Statement

Course Development Options

Basic Skill Status (CB08)
Course is not a basic skills course.
Grade Options
  • Letter Grade
  • Pass/No Pass
Repeat Limit
0

Transferability & Gen. Ed. Options

Transferability
Transferable to both UC and CSU
ý GEArea(s)StatusDetails
2GDXý GE Area D - Social and Behavioral SciencesApproved
CSU GEArea(s)StatusDetails
CGDYCSU GE Area D - Social SciencesApproved
CGFXCSU GE Area F - Ethnic StudiesApproved
IGETCArea(s)StatusDetails
IG4XIGETC Area 4 - Social and Behavioral SciencesApproved
IG7XIGETC Area 7 - Ethnic StudiesApproved

Units and Hours

Summary

Minimum Credit Units
4.0
Maximum Credit Units
4.0

Weekly Student Hours

TypeIn ClassOut of Class
Lecture Hours4.08.0
Laboratory Hours0.00.0

Course Student Hours

Course Duration (Weeks)
12.0
Hours per unit divisor
36.0
Course In-Class (Contact) Hours
Lecture
48.0
Laboratory
0.0
Total
48.0
Course Out-of-Class Hours
Lecture
96.0
Laboratory
0.0
NA
0.0
Total
96.0

Prerequisite(s)

Corequisite(s)

Advisory(ies)

EWRT D001A or EWRT D01AH or ESL D005.

Limitation(s) on Enrollment

Entrance Skill(s)

General Course Statement(s)

(See general education pages for the requirements this course meets.)

Methods of Instruction

Lecture and visual aids

Discussion of assigned reading

In-class essays

In-class exploration of Internet sites

Homework and extended projects

Field observation and field trips

Guest speakers

Collaborative learning and small group exercises

Collaborative projects

Assignments

  1. Readings from the primary text and supplemental articles, reports, handouts, online sites, and videos.
  2. Writing:
    1. Short commentaries based on assigned questions and readings.
    2. Reflections that examine personal learning experiences in relation to course topics and themes.
    3. Analytical essays that explicate and apply key course topics and themes, describe involvement in Asian American community activities and synthesize research findings.
    4. Summaries of key ideas drawn from assigned readings and videos.
    5. Peer feedback on the work of classmates.
  3. Guided research project based on a synthesis of course material, independent information gathering (e.g. participant observation, research of primary and secondary source material), and critical analysis to produce a multimedia presentation on Asian Americanist anti-racism work.
  4. Collaborative exercises based on the above-listed writing assignments and/or in-class activities.

Methods of Evaluation

  1. Participation in class discussions and collaborative exercises to be evaluated on engagement with course material, respect for fellow classmates, and completion of exercises.
  2. Writing assignments to be evaluated based on rubrics, which include measures such as degree of completion, the accuracy of discussion, fulfillment of required elements, clarity of communication, engagement with the audience, and depth and precision of analysis.
  3. Final project, such as a guided multimedia research project, to be evaluated based on a rubric that assesses areas such as completion of required elements, clarity of communication, precision and depth of analysis, degree of creativity, and engagement of the audience.

Essential Student Materials/Essential College Facilities

Essential Student Materials: 
  • None.
Essential College Facilities:
  • None.

Examples of Primary Texts and References

AuthorTitlePublisherDate/EditionISBN
Cathy J. Schlund-Vials (Editor), K. Scott Wong (Editor), Linda Trinh Võ (Editor)Keywords for Asian American StudiesNYU Press20151479803286
Natalia Molina (Editor), Daniel Martinez HoSang (Editor), Ramón A. Gutiérrez (Editor)Relational Formations of Race: Theory, Method, and PracticeUC Press20199780520299672
Saher SelodForever Suspect: Racialized Surveillance of Muslim Americans in the War on TerrorRutgers Uiversity Press20189780813588346
Julian Hu PeguesSpace-Time Colonialism: Alaska's Indigenous and Asian EntanglementsThe University of North Carolina Press20211469656183
Chong Chon-SmithEast Meets Black: Asian and Black Masculinities in the Post-Civil Rights EraUniversity Press of Mississippi20159781479817962

Examples of Supporting Texts and References

None.

Learning Outcomes and Objectives

Course Objectives

  • Apply theory and knowledge produced by Asian Americans to describe the critical events, histories, cultures, intellectual traditions, contributions, lived experiences, and social struggles of Asian American groups with a focus on agency and group-affirmation in an appraisal of the origins, evolution, and impact of Asian American studies and ethnic studies.
  • Analyze and articulate contemporary conceptualizations of race, ethnicity, racialization, and racism--including intersectional approaches--as articulated by Asian American studies, ethnic studies, and other social sciences in comparison to historical claims of biological race.
  • Scrutinize the substance and roles of Orientalist ideology before and during large-scale migrations of Asians to the U.S., and resistance and struggles by Asians and Asian Americans against that ideology.
  • Dissect claims of racial difference in debates over eligibility for citizenship in the U.S. to highlight the construction of whiteness by law, and the lived experiences and social struggles of Asian Americans to challenge whiteness and white dominance.
  • Describe and critique racial formations of anti-Asian ideology, violence, policies, and immigration laws in the U.S. in the late 19th to early 20th century using an approach of racial relationality that examines whiteness, anti-blackness, indigeneity, and Asian American racialization.
  • Appraise the emergence of the model minority trope and Asian American lived experiences in the contexts of post-WWII, civil rights-era Black radical politics and the Asian American movement, the 1980s and 1990s, and now.
  • Review critically how struggle, resistance, racial and social justice, multiracial solidarity, and liberation--as experienced and enacted by Asian Americans--are relevant to current and structural issues such as post-civil rights racial formations and Asian Americanist anti-racist engagements.

CSLOs

  • Analyze and articulate the concepts of race, racialization, racism, and anti-racism in relation to class, gender, sexuality, religion, national origin, immigrant status, citizenship, and/or language as assessed by Asian American Studies through contemporary case studies involving Asian Americans.

  • Describe and actively engage with an anti-racist issue, practice, and/or movement through community involvement and/or participant observation, and primary and secondary source research to critically review the structural conditions, the possibilities, and the constraints of Asian Americanist struggle for a just and equitable society.

Outline

  1. Apply theory and knowledge produced by Asian Americans to describe the critical events, histories, cultures, intellectual traditions, contributions, lived experiences, and social struggles of Asian American groups with a focus on agency and group-affirmation in an appraisal of the origins, evolution, and impact of Asian American studies and ethnic studies.
    1. Compare scholarly studies of Asians in the U.S. prior to the 1960s and since the late 1960s.
    2. Analyze the political and multiracial struggle of student agitation for ethnic studies in the context of 1960s social movements, such as the civil rights movement, the Black Power movement, the anti-war movement, and the Asian American movement.
    3. Examine the institutional establishment of Asian American studies at colleges, universities, and K-12.
    4. Explore the interdisciplinary approach of Asian American studies, focusing on the social sciences.
    5. Probe the politicized status of Asian American studies and ethnic studies and questions about the institutionalization of knowledge and power.
    6. Identify the contributions of Asian American studies to the social sciences, in terms of critical events, histories, cultures, intellectual traditions, lived experiences, and social struggles of Asian American groups.
  2. Analyze and articulate contemporary conceptualizations of race, ethnicity, racialization, and racism--including intersectional approaches--as articulated by Asian American studies, ethnic studies, and other social sciences in comparison to historical claims of biological race.
    1. Compare the U.S. Census from 1790 to the present, focusing on changing racial categories and population sizes.
    2. Evaluate U.S. scientific claims of biologically distinct racial groups during the 19th century-early 20th century in the context of existing debates over slavery, citizenship, and immigration.
    3. Examine conclusions about the racial differences made by American anthropologists and the Association of American Anthropologists from the 19th century to the present.
    4. Appraise the theory of racial formation as articulated by Michael Omi and Howard Winant and as reformulated by contemporary Asian American studies and ethnic studies scholars who foreground intersectional analysis of gender, class, national origins, sexuality, religion, citizenship, and/or language.
    5. Account for racialization as a social process in which groups are ascribed race-based identities that are mutually constitutive: the theoretical approach of racial relationality (also known as differential racialization or comparative racialization) as proposed by contemporary scholars in Asian American studies and ethnic studies.
  3. Scrutinize the substance and roles of Orientalist ideology before and during large-scale migrations of Asians to the U.S., and resistance and struggles by Asians and Asian Americans against that ideology.
    1. Compare Western/European distinctions of religious and civilizational status as referred to by the Oriental-Occidental divide, including ascribed differences between the "Ottoman peril" and "Christian civilization."
    2. Outline early American engagement with Orientalist ideology, such as U.S. interest in Confucianism as an example of moral statecraft combining personal virtue and state affairs, and U.S. consumption of Chinese luxury goods in the production of social status in the new republic.
    3. Assess critiques of Orientalism by theorists such as Edward Said.
    4. Analyze accommodationist narratives and counter-narratives to Orientalist ideology produced by Asian Americans since the 20th century.
  4. Dissect claims of racial difference in debates over eligibility for citizenship in the U.S. to highlight the construction of whiteness by law, and the lived experiences and social struggles of Asian Americans to challenge whiteness and white dominance.
    1. Dramatize post-Emancipation era debates over race and citizenship pertaining to Chinese, Blacks, and whites.
      1. Debates over "coolie" Chinese labor with distinctions of "free" and "unfree" labor.
      2. Debates over blackness and implications for Asians in the U.S.
      3. Debates over securing the racial categories of white and nonwhite.
    2. Interpret the arguments and logic of the Supreme Court case of Takao Ozawa v. United States (1922) that defined the racial category of whiteness to the exclusion of Japanese in the U.S.
    3. Examine the redefinition of whiteness and its exclusivity against both Asian Indians and the claims of scientifically determinable Caucasians in the Supreme Court case of Bhagat Singh Thind v. United States (1923).
  5. Describe and critique racial formations of anti-Asian ideology, violence, policies, and immigration laws in the U.S. in the late 19th to early 20th century using an approach of racial relationality that examines whiteness, anti-blackness, indigeneity, and Asian American racialization.
    1. Assess the development of anti-Chinese fervor in debates over immigration.
      1. Compare the role of anti-Blackness and the construction of whiteness in the development of the anti-Chinese movement.
      2. Contrast the notion of Black citizenship as a point of comparison for the anti-Chinese movement.
    2. Analyze the pathologizing characterizations of Japanese gender roles and family formation (in comparison to white families) in arguments in favor of prohibiting Japanese immigration to the U.S.
    3. Evaluate the racial logic of U.S. colonization of the Philippines and subsequent anti-Asian exclusionist attention directed at Filipinos in the 1930s.
      1. Evaluate the colonial possession of the Philippines Islands in terms of the racial logics of white supremacy and benevolent assimilation.
      2. Compare characterizations of Filipinos in the Philippines with characterizations of Native Americans and Blacks in the U.S. in debates over the annexation of the Philippine Islands; comparison of racialized "natives."
      3. Assess U.S. reactions to the American-Philippines War in terms of racialized characterizations of the violence and military strategy and tactics.
      4. Compare the racial logics of U.S. colonial administration of Filipinos in the Philippines and U.S. federal control of Native Americans in the U.S., focusing on educational institutions such as the American schools in the Philippines and the Indian boarding schools in the U.S.
      5. Interrogate the efforts by anti-Asian exclusionists to prohibit Filipino immigration based on claims of racialized transgressions of labor, gender, and sexuality.
  6. Appraise the emergence of the model minority trope and Asian American lived experiences in the contexts of post-WWII, civil rights-era Black radical politics and the Asian American movement, the 1980s and 1990s, and now.
    1. Examine post-WWII Chinese and Japanese community tactics to challenge anti-Asian racism of Cold War racial ideologies.
    2. Compare the political commitments, goals, and organizing of the Black Power movement and the Asian American movement.
    3. Interpret the racial comparisons made of Blacks, Chinese, and Japanese in the national press during the late 1960 and early 1970s and comparative assertions of "proper" and "improper" minorities within an assimilationist ideology of national belonging.
    4. Identify the changing characterization of Asian Americans from the 1960s to the 1990s in the national press, in the context of both the U.S. educational system and the political economy.
    5. Examine the trope of the model minority in 21st-century contexts: affirmative action debate, Black Lives Matter movement, and during the COVID pandemic.
  7. Review critically how struggle, resistance, racial and social justice, multiracial solidarity, and liberation--as experienced and enacted by Asian Americans--are relevant to current and structural issues such as post-civil rights racial formations and Asian Americanist anti-racist engagements.
    1. Analyze the Los Angeles uprising of 1992 to identify arguments of disenfranchisement and claims of national belonging by Korean Americans, Black Americans, Latino Americans, and white Americans.
    2. Dissect the stakes and arguments over affirmative action and how African Americans, Latino Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and white Americans are positioned variously by different parties with differing stances on affirmative action.
    3. Probe the positions that Asian Americans take in relation to the Black Lives Matter movement to outline the racial logics of solidarity and anti-black disassociation.
    4. Critique anti-Asian violence and scapegoating during the COVID pandemic in the context of historical anti-Asian racism and racial formations and of Asian American counter-racist responses.
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