The “Racial Bourgeoisie”

I read something this past summer that I thought resonated with the part of The Karma of Brown Folk where Prashad talks about how the desi population is placed at a racial ambivalence within the American social hierarchy. In that work, We Will Not Be Used: Are Asian Americans the Racial Bourgeoisie?, Mari Matsuda discusses how Asian Americans are encouraged to strive for unattainable “whiteness.”  The interactions between Asian Americans and other people of color are basically divided into two directions: the pursuit of that whiteness which places Asian Americans on the model minority pedestal and the rejection of it. The system is designed to pit people of color against each other in order to provide the norm a level of defense against an organized pushback.

One of the quotes that really resonates with me from Matsuda’s writing is: “The success [of Asian Americans] that is our pride is not to be given over as a weapon to use against other struggling communities.” The rhetoric of the model minority myth is so damaging to the all of our society and as an Asian American, being used as a tool to carry out the oppression of other minorities is difficult to sit with. Yet I understand my privilege in this racial hierarchy and the necessity to challenge and dismantle it.

Citations & Interesting Readings:

Matsuda, Mari. “We Will Not Be Used: Are Asian Americans the Racial Bourgeoisie?” In Asian American Studies Now: A Critical Reader, edited by Wu Jean Yu-wen Shen and Chen Thomas C., 558-64. Rutgers University Press, 2010. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1bmzn3s.32.

Kim, Claire Jean, and Taeku Lee. “Interracial Politics: Asian Americans and Other Communities of Color.” PS: Political Science and Politics 34, no. 3 (2001): 631-37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1353551.