2309 Race and Pedagogy Project - Research Archive » Asian American

Asian American

August 1, 2006

Zhou, Min and Susan S. Kim. “Community Forces, Social Capital, and Educational Achievement: The Case of Supplementary Education in the Chinese and Korean Immigrant Communities,”Harvard Educational Review. 76.1(2006), 1-26.

August 01st 2006 Posted to Asian American

Abstract: “Extraordinary Asian American educational achievement has often been credited to a common cultural influence of Confucianism that emphasizes education, family honor, discipline, and respect for authority. In this article, Min Zhou and Susan Kim argue that immigration selectivity, higher than average levels of premigration and postmigration socioeconomic status, and ethnic social structures interact to create unique patterns of adaptation and social environments conducive to educational achievement. This article seeks to unpack the ethnic effect through a comparative analysis of the ethnic system of supplementary education that has developed in two immigrant communities–Chinese and Korean–in the United States. The study suggests that the cultural attributes of a group interact substantially with structural factors, particularly tangible ethnic social structures on which community forces are sustained and social capital is formed. The authors conclude that ‘culture’ is not static and requires structural support to constantly adapt to new situations.”

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August 23, 2005

Kolko, Beth E., Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert B. Rodman, eds. Race in Cyberspace. New York: Routledge, 2000.

August 23rd 2005 Posted to Race and the Internet, African American, Asian American

Widely acknowledged as a vanguard text on cyberspace race studies, Race in Cyberspace, in collection of twelve essays, directly challenges Internet utopists’ proclamations of an online racial paradise.

The editors begin with an anecdote illustrating how poorly online discourse on race is received, even in critical and mature academic circles. A post on a listserv about a theory positing race as a social, not biological, construct initiated a “flame war,” as the original poster was attacked and labeled a troublemaker for having the audacity to even mention race. The editors were troubled by the fact that the original poster was not attacked for any perceived theoretical flaws, but simply for the act of introducing racial discourse. Online, there seems to be a culture of ignoring race matters. (Read the article)

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August 18, 2005

Lee, Rachel C., and Sau-ling Cynthia Wong, eds. Asian America.Net: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Cyberspace. New York: Routledge, 2003.

August 18th 2005 Posted to Race, Gender and Sexuality, Race and the Internet, Asian American

A book of collected essays, Asian America.Net seeks to address the question of how cybertechnologies complicate the tenuous space occupied by Asian Americans on issues of identity, transnationalism, and gender/sexual politics. If it is a truism, write Lee and Wong, that there was no such concept as “Asian American” prior to ethnic consciousness movement of the 1960s – the entire label being a construct – then the additional layer of technological virtuality only intensifies contestation of what it means to be Asian American. (Read the article)

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August 3, 2005

Portes, Alejandro and Dag McLeod, “Educational Progress of Children of Immigrants: The Roles of Class, Ethnicity and School Context,” Sociology of Education, 69.4 (1996): 255-75.

August 03rd 2005 Posted to Race and Globalization, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Race, Class and Pedagogy, Latina/o American, Asian American

This article addresses two major factors that contribute to the success or failure of students from immigrant families: socioeconomic status and the social influence exerted by ethnic communities on students. As Portes and McLeod write in their abstract,

“Recent immigration to the United States has spawned a rapidly growing second generation, most of whom are of school age. This article reports the findings of a study of 5,255 second-generation high school students in Florida and California, who were children of Cuban and Vietnamese immigrants (representative of relatively advantaged groups) and of Haitian and Mexican immigrants (representative of relatively disadvantaged groups). The study found that parents’ socioeconomic status (SES), length of U.S. residence, and hours spent on homework significantly affected the students’ academic performance, but did not eliminate the effects of ethnic community. Attendance at higher-SES schools increased the average academic performance and the positive effect of parents’ SES, whereas attendance at inner-city schools flattened the negative effect of ethnic disadvantage. However, school context had no appreciable effect on children from advantaged ethnic backgrounds” (255). (Read the article)

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July 23, 2005

Poster, Mark. “Virtual Ethnicity.” What’s the Matter with the Internet? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 148-170.

July 23rd 2005 Posted to Race and the Internet, Asian American

In chapter eight of What’s the Matter with the Internet?, Mark Poster (UC Irvine) applies his broader thesis analyzing the material matter of the Internet on the subject of race and ethnicity. Drawing upon heavy theory, Poster questions how the Internet affects race. He speculates that race and ethnicity as portrayed on the Internet is somehow transformed; that in becoming virtual and disembodied, race and ethnicity (and on a larger scale, communities in general) must define itself against a global context, causing a technology-induced anxiety for some, elation for others. In his attempt to systematically parse and organize virtual ethnicity, Poster touches on the Maori, Asian American and Jewish cybercommunities, which, he contends, use the Internet as a means for enhancing and strengthening their communities, rather than any kind of transcendence of ethnicity.

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July 19, 2005

Nakamura, Lisa. “Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet.” Reading Digital Cultures. Ed. David Trend. Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 2001. 226-235

July 19th 2005 Posted to Race and the Internet, African American, Asian American

“Despite claims by digital uptopians,” contends Nakamura, “identity positions are still very much in evidence” (226). The Internet, she claims, does not realize any racial democracies nor does it create an egalitarian space for its users. Drawing upon her own forays into MUDs (Multi-user Dungeons) or MOOs (MUD, Object-Oriented), which are online, text-driven environments, Nakamura critically reads how users address or attempt to ignore issues of race. Her central thesis argues that the Internet allows for a new kind of racial “passing,” in which members of a minority can assume a “default white” status by simply keeping quiet, and whites can reinforce stereotypes by engaging in “identity tourism.” She calls for the Internet to be a place for thoughtful discourse instead of perpetuating old hierarchies.

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