The color of success : Asian Americans and the origins of the model minority
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The color of success : Asian Americans and the origins of the model minority
（Politics and society in twentieth-century America）
Princeton University Press, c2014
- : hardback
- : paperback
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Note
Archival, primary, and unpublished sources: p. [333]-339
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The Color of Success tells of the astonishing transformation of Asians in the United States from the "yellow peril" to "model minorities"--peoples distinct from the white majority but lauded as well-assimilated, upwardly mobile, and exemplars of traditional family values--in the middle decades of the twentieth century. As Ellen Wu shows, liberals argued for the acceptance of these immigrant communities into the national fold, charging that the failure of America to live in accordance with its democratic ideals endangered the country's aspirations to world leadership. Weaving together myriad perspectives, Wu provides an unprecedented view of racial reform and the contradictions of national belonging in the civil rights era. She highlights the contests for power and authority within Japanese and Chinese America alongside the designs of those external to these populations, including government officials, social scientists, journalists, and others.
And she demonstrates that the invention of the model minority took place in multiple arenas, such as battles over zoot suiters leaving wartime internment camps, the juvenile delinquency panic of the 1950s, Hawaii statehood, and the African American freedom movement. Together, these illuminate the impact of foreign relations on the domestic racial order and how the nation accepted Asians as legitimate citizens while continuing to perceive them as indelible outsiders. By charting the emergence of the model minority stereotype, The Color of Success reveals that this far-reaching, politically charged process continues to have profound implications for how Americans understand race, opportunity, and nationhood.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi Introduction Imperatives of Asian American Citizenship 1 Part I War and the Assimilating Other 11 Chapter 1 Leave Your Zoot Suits Behind 16 Chapter 2 How American Are We? 43 Chapter 3 Nisei in Uniform 72 Chapter 4 America's Chinese 111 Part II Definitively Not-Black 145 Chapter 5 Success Story, Japanese American Style 150 Chapter 6 Chinatown Offers Us a Lesson 181 Chapter 7 The Melting Pot of the Pacific 210 Epilogue Model Minority/Asian American 242 Notes 259 Archival, Primary, and Unpublished Sources 333 Index 341
by "Nielsen BookData"