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ANTH 240: Racial Triangulation

Have you ever heard of the idea that Asian Americans are the "model minority" and wondered where that idea came from and or what that means for relations between people of color in the U.S? Claire Jean Kim's "The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans" lays out the existence of this idea and those relating to Asian Americans' status as a "racial bourgeoisie" on the scale of status and privilege. Her two arguments about the creation of this triangulation are as follows: one, the "opinionmakers" of white society (journalists, elected officials, community leaders, etc.) create a public discourse about racial groups that in turn generates a structure for race relations and two, Asian Americans have been triangulated in relation to Blacks and Whites by White society either as a way for Whites to dominate both "lesser" racial groups or in order to position Asian Americans as foreign and exclude them from participation in larger society. Kim explains that the status of Asian Americans and other racial groups in the U.S. is always positioned in relation to Whites (who sit at the top of the scale because they created it) and Blacks (who sit at the bottom due to the long history of mistreatment in this country). This triangulation, explained visually by the graph below, has existed since the mid-1800s and has only gone from overt to more coded in its practice since then, never actually disappearing from society's practices.

This basically explains that most, if not all of the ideas about and structures based on race in this country are determined by the White elite. Whether it's more on the ground with White politicians, writers, journalists, influencers, and the upper echelon of society or a result of the white society that has made decisions about everything since the founding of this country, the relationships between Black and Asian American people is way less about the two groups than it is about White America's hold on minorities.