Cracking the Color Lines: Asian American And Black Relations

This course offers an interdisciplinary, chronological, and thematic examination of Black and Asian race relations in America in order to understand and interrogate the increasing gaps and potential alliances between these groups. This course is divided into three sections: Context and Contact, Cooperation and/or Conflict, and Cross Cultural Collaboration. Topics covered in the first section include: international Afro-Asian: connections; the racialization of Blacks and Asians; effects of early anti-Asian legislation and the legacy of slavery; WWII; racial theory beyond Black and White. The second section is framed by the entrance of second wave Asian immigrants following the Immigration Act of 1965 and the impact of 1970s deindustrialization on urban America . Topics include a critical analysis of stereotypes, such as the model minority myth used to pit Asians and Blacks against one another, and a focus on urban race relations (such as the 1992 LA riots) within an economic context. We will also cover: cross fertilization of political activism in the 1960s; the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Asian American Movements; the model minority myth, nativism, and Asian anti-Black racism. Additionally, we will be covering the experiences of sexism and homophobia shared by women of color, reparations, and affirmative action. The final section of the course is dedicated to instances of collaboration through an exploration of various cultural forms, including contemporary cultural appropriations of and by Blacks and Asian Americans expressed in hip hop and film as well as the rising phenomenon of Asian/Black marriages and their offspring.