REQUISITE REALIGNMENT: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, ASIAN AMERICANS, AND THE BLACK-WHITE BINARY. - Document - Gale Academic OneFile
When Asian immigrants first reached American shores in substantial numbers during the late 1800s, they were faced with a country that barely recognized Black citizens and a system that continually reinforced a Black-White binary. If Asian Americans wanted to attempt to obtain protections for themselves, they could not do so by asserting that those protections had to extend to Asian Americans--instead, they had to box themselves into the Black-White binary, often aligning with Whiteness to claim both citizenship and equality. While this White alignment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can be explained by legal realities that made it impossible for Asians to plausibly assert themselves as Black, such White alignments continue to occur in the contemporary era, most prominently displayed through affirmative action and the strides that some Asian American organizations have taken to topple the institution. By examining the amicus briefs filed by various Asian American or
When Asian immigrants first reached American shores in substantial numbers during the late 1800s, they were faced with a country that barely recognized Black citizens and a system that continually reinforced a Black-White binary. If Asian Americans wanted to attempt to obtain protections for themselves, they could not do so by asserting that those protections had to extend to Asian Americans--instead, they had to box themselves into the Black-White binary, often aligning with Whiteness to claim both citizenship and equality. While this White alignment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
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