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Copyright by Kara Leiko Takasaki 2021 The Dissertation Committee for Kara Leiko Takasaki Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Racial Optimization: How Racialized Masculinity Shapes the Relationships of Asian American Men Committee: Jennifer Glass, Supervisor Christine Williams Sharmila Rudrappa Madeline Hsu David Takeuchi Racial Optimization: How Racialized Masculinity Shapes the Relationships of Asian American Men by Kara Leiko Takasaki Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2021 Dedication For the women whose labor goes unrecognized; we must build a better village to build better men. Acknowledgements I want to thank my dissertation chair and advisor, Jennifer Glass, for her patience, encouragement, and suggestions from the earliest drafting of this research idea and through all of its iterations. She gave me the space to figure out what I needed from graduate school and the kind of scholar that I wanted to be; her practical guidance, training, and support kept me connected and grounded when I might have given up. I also want to thank Christine Williams and Sharmila Rudrappa for challenging me to learn from their experiences as feminist researchers and to grow into the questions and conversations that we’ve had. I am infinitely grateful to Madeline Hsu and David Takeuchi, for believing in me and my research interests. Their mentorship showed me how I might survive graduate school and directed me to the connections and resources that I desperately needed. I also want to thank Gloria González López and Mary Rose for the many kindnesses they’ve shown me. I’m glad to have taken courses with them to learn how to teach difficult subjects and to learn how I would like to work with students. I am also grateful to Catherine Riegle-Crumb, Aprile Benner, Cynthia Osborne, Deb Umberson, and Eric Tang for providing me with opportunities to expand my research skills and networks. During this last year of graduate school, I have been blessed to work with Matt Kammer-Kerwick at the IC2 Institute under the leadership of Art Markman. I am exceedingly grateful to Matt for his mentorship, advocacy, and the opportunities he’s given me to contribute and grow as a scholar. So much of my graduate school journey has been shaped by the kindnesses of the graduate students, post-docs, and staff I have met at UT Austin and from other campuses. v I am especially grateful to have met and learned from Cassie Gianni, Kean Hsu, Charles Lu, Sheela Jane Menon, Chienyn Chi, Sarah Nicholus, Esther Kim, Nong Xiong, Diyana Sastrawati, Jenjira Yahirun, Caity Collins, Sona Shah, Saswathi Natta, Jaclyn Wong, Rachel Yu Guo, Catherine Nguyen, christina ong, Jacob Thomas, Rebecca Amin, Amina Zarrugh, Megan Neeley, Corey McZeal, Luis Romero, Vivian Shaw, Claude Bonazzo, Andrew Krebs, Mario Venegas, Katie Rogers, Aida Villanueva, Kathy Hill, Jae Kwon, Tati Russo-Taite, KT Doerr, Ellyn Steidl, Paige Gabriel, and Hyun-Jeong Ha. Researchers outside of UT have energized me with their insights and advice. I am grateful to Daniel Eisen, Rennison Lalgee, Fumiko Takasugi, Oiyan Poon, Miliann Kang, Adia Harvey-Wingfield, Eiichiro Azuma, Kumiko Nemoto, Jane Yamashiro, Youngjoo Cha, Lisa Park, Robyn Rodriguez, Angie Chung, Anthony Ocampo, Grace Kao, Julia McQuillan, Sarah Damaske, Sarah Sobieraj, and Kristen Schilt for our discussions. My research would not be possible without the participation of my interview respondents. I am grateful to them for volunteering their stories and donating their time to this research endeavor. I hope the products of this research will help them and the people who love them to feel seen and understood. I am deeply grateful to my parents and my grandparents, for giving me the resources to pursue this degree. I hope the products of this research bring healing. I am inspired by and thankful to my older brother and his beautiful family for letting me escape into their lives when I needed a respite from graduate school and Austin. I am also grateful to Elise Nakamura, Marissa Takase, Kelsey Anderson, Kelsea Hosoda, Jenny Lau, Elisha Sum, Ed Cheng, Koji Ueunten, Terhys Persad, Peter Chang, Vanesa Navarro, Yao Lei, Janie Wang, Tim Wang, Veronica León, Melissa Lau, Hanna Huang, Rana Sui Inboden, and Judith Huang for seeing me through this program, believing in me, keeping me grounded, and giving me perspective. My time in Austin has brought me to the most vi important relationships in my life. I can never express how thankful I am for finding the freedom and stability of God’s love and the love of my partner, Anilkumar Adhikari and our anxious rescue dog, Leo. vii Abstract RACIAL OPTIMIZATION: HOW RACIALIZED MASCULINITY SHAPES THE RELATIONSHIPS OF ASIAN AMERICAN MEN Kara Leiko Takasaki, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2021 Supervisor: Jennifer Glass Over the life course, socioeconomic resources protect from certain kinds of hardship. In this dissertation I answer the question, why do Asian American men that are highly educated with high paying jobs struggle to develop relationships necessary for management track positions and relationships that act as stress-buffering protection during life’s ups and downs? I interview 35 Asian American men and 15 non-Hispanic, White American men born in the U.S and working in professional occupations in Austin, Texas. I find a process that I call racial optimization, where Asian American men adopted cultural strategies compatible with American racial stereotypes of Asian immigrant labor. These men learned these strategies from watching their families respond to racism and they learned these strategies from the limited representations that they saw of themselves in American society. For these men, these socially expected cultural strategies entailed a singular focus on excelling in the cognitive skills specific to their science, technology, engineering, and medical (STEM) occupations, in order to primarily secure financial viii security. These men were mostly successful in securing financial stability using this cultural strategy, however this strategy also seemed to limit the kind of work that these men could do as they advanced in their careers. I argue that the exclusion from management the men described in their careers is related to the difficulty these men described in their relationships with friends, dating and in family. Although these men worked for most of their lives toward excelling in the technical skills of their professions, most of them did not see their non-cognitive skills or social capital as something that they could change. Instead, they attributed their relationship difficulties to individual personality, ethnic or family socialization, or to cultural racism against Asians in American society. In this dissertation, I argue that American culture provides a discourse for Asian American men to understand their pursuit of masculinity through specific economic strategies, but this discourse is limited because of their race and has consequences for relationships throughout their work and family lives. ix Table of Contents List of Tables .................................................................................................................... xii Chapter 1: Introduction .......................................................................................................1 Background and Theoretical Framework ...................................................................2 The Importance of Race and Gender for Relationships in Professional Occupations...............................................................................................2 Racializing Asian American Men and Their Relationships ...........................8 Asian American Men in the U.S. Marriage Market and Dating Culture .....12 Dissertation Overview ..............................................................................................16 Methodology .............................................................................................................17 Site ................................................................................................................19 Data Collection and Analysis .......................................................................20 Sample ..........................................................................................................21 Chapter 2: Racial and Immigrant Foundations of Asian American Masculinity ..............26 Economic Constraints ...................................................................................27 Social Exposure and Closure to Careers .......................................................31 Living Vicariously Through Children ..........................................................37 Learning by Example ....................................................................................47 Filling in the Silences...........................................................................54 Reconnecting with Parents as Adults ............................................................58 Conclusion ................................................................................................................62 Chapter 3: Racial Optimization in Professional Occupations...........................................64 Cultural Strategies.....................................................................................................68