Gary Okihiro Essay

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Julie Nguyen Professor Ho ASA 001 25 October 2012 Asians in America “We are kindred people, African and Asian Americans. We are kindred people, forged in the fire of white supremacy and struggle, but how can we recall that kinship when our memories have been massaged by white hands, and how can we remember the past when our storytellers have been whispering amid the din of Western civilization and Anglo-conformity?” While African slavery and Native American genocide are familiar topics in United States history, Asians in American history remains an unfamiliar subject to many. Seized, whipped, and discriminated describe the ways the Chinese and Japanese were treated, but the fact behind this period of Asian American history is rarely mentioned in standard text books. Throughout American history, Asians struggled with their American identity. Through his article “Is Yellow Black or White”, Gary Okihiro provides a point of view that identity is imperative in America’s society. Slavery was first introduced to America in 1619 by the Dutch. It began with twenty African slaves and exponentially grew to almost one thousand in thirty-five years. South Asians were introduced to the East Coast during the eighteenth century as indentured workers and slaves. They were given American names and forced to marry African American women. By the end of the century, the Americans became accustomed to slave and indentured servitude and heavily relied on them. Gary Okihiro states: “Asian Americans have served the master class, whether as ‘near-blacks’ in the past or as ‘near whites’ in the present or as ‘marginal men’ in both the past and the present. Yellow is emphatically neither white nor black; but insofar as Asians and Africans share a subordinate position to the master class, yellow is a shade of black, and black, a shade of yellow” (Okihiro 27). Okihiro informs his
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