Asian Americans In Popular Culture Analysis

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1. How does the text circulate? The material analyzed by Robert Lee circulates in the form of a book that was originally published by Temple University Press on 1999. The author’s targeted audience lies within a broad spectrum that primarily consists of marginalized Asian Americans and uninformed members of society who have been either directly or indirectly affected by intrinsic forms of racism depicted in various forms of mass communication. Orientals: Asian Americans In Popular Culture, attempts to analyze the portrayal of Asians and Asian Americans in the media from a cultural perspective and their social implications. Lastly, parenthetical citations are used when the author references statistical data from sociological case studies or …show more content…

What is it about, empirically? (What is being studied as the object?) 
 The book was formulated using an argumentative approach that primarily focuses on the racial ideology that cemented Asian stereotypes in American culture. In addition, the author effectively utilizes different sociopolitical epochs ranging from the conclusion of the second world war to the Reagan-Bush administration era in order to accurately contextualize the racial category many Asians were forced to occupy in American Society. With that in mind, the scale of the argument put forth by the author is limited in it’s applicability because it focuses on the social condition that prevailed during that time in American culture. Lastly, I was able to identify one additional source of comparison that has directly contributed to the analysis of socially designed racial hierarchies in American culture. For example, “Race, Racism & American Law,” (1973, print) by Professor Derrick Bell examines the crucial role racial hierarchies plays in promoting socioeconomic disparities such as income, wealth and opportunity between non-white individuals in …show more content…

Write a paragraph discussing a passage that inspired you, made you think, or frustrated you,and how it did so. The paragraph should be between 160-300 words, and you should cite the page number of the passage. 
 One of the more interesting passages in the reading is located on page 146, paragraph one, and it revolves around the subject of ethnic assimilation as a cold war containment tactic utilized to circumvent the spread of communism, race mixing and homosexuality in American culture. Subsequently, I perceived the author’s explanation to be extremely powerful because it discussed the political climate that was directly responsible in crafting the narrative for the triumphant ethnic assimilation of Asians in America. The author goes on to acknowledge that the United States during the cold war era wanted to project Democratic values where people of color could enjoy equal rights and upward mobility. Moreover, the author effectively outlines the effects that the 1955 Time Magazine article had on creating a new racial hierarchy system in American. In my opinion, the authors decision to utilize the designation “model minority” as a means of explaining how many Asian Americans have been and continue to be placed in unsavory positions that directly contribute to racial hierarchies is extremely insightful and potent. In essence, the success of asian assimilation in America has culminated in the demotion of other ethnic minorities such as blacks and hispanics, but ultimately

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