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UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Asian American and African American masculinities : race, citizenship, and culture in post- civil rights Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0c8255gj Author Chon-Smith, Chong Publication Date 2006 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Asian American and African American Masculinities: Race, Citizenship, and Culture in Post -Civil Rights A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Phil osophy in Literature by Chong Chon-Smith Committee in charge: Professor Lisa Lowe, Chair Professor Takashi Fujitani Professor Judith Halberstam Professor Nayan Shah Professor Shelley Streeby Professor Lisa Yoneyama This dissertation of Chong Chon-Smith is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ Chair University of California, San Diego 2006 iii DEDICATION I have had the extraordinary privilege and opportunity to learn from brilliant and committed scholars at UCSD. This dissertation would not have been successful if not for their intellectual rigor, wisdom, and generosity. This dissertation was just a dim thought until Judith Halberstam powered it with her unique and indelible iridescence. Nayan Shah and Shelley Streeby have shown me the best kind of work American Studies has to offer. Their formidable ideas have helped shape these pages. Tak Fujitani and Lisa Yoneyama have always offered me their time and office hospitality whenever I needed critical feedback. I want to thank them for their precise questions and open door. Finally, Lisa Lowe has generously supported my study, providing me with intellectual freedom and unwavering guidance. Her gift to me extends beyond mere institutional brick and mortar —I now have a mind that thinks and dreams the impossible. I’d also like to thank my home away from home at OASIS, especially Patrick Velasquez and Cecilla Ubilla for inviting me into your family and giving a young scholar a much needed community dedicated to “species being.” Likewise, close friends and family have supported me with good food, great conversation, and most importantly, love. Joon-Hyun Choi deserves credit for believing in what we do and iv why we do it and allowing us men to talk about it. Arvind Santhanam has never stopped providing me with good cheer and the warmth of cross -cultural friendship. Gilber to Porter is a shining light in Texas and everyone knows it. Jason James shares his humanity and humor with me and I thank him for that. Manilay Khamphan is the best that chunsa spirit offers on Earth. Finally, my family has been my greatest source of inspiration. I thank especially my sister and niece for supporting me unconditionally and to my mother whose dreams allowed me to follow my own. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page………………………………………………….. iii Dedication……………………………………………………… iv Table of Contents………………………………………………. v Vita, Publications and Fields of Study………………………..... vi Abstract…………………………………………………………. vii Introduction……………………………………………………... 1 1. Aiiieeeee! and Black Radicalism: Race and Gender in Asian American Literature………………………………….... 55 2. Yellow Bodies, Black Sweat: Yao, Ichiro, and Sport Internationalism………………………... 84 3. “I’m Michael Jackson, You Tito”: Kung-Fu Fighters and Hip -Hop Buddies in Martial Arts Buddy Films…………………………………… 130 4. Voices from Afro -Asian Rhythms and Rhymes: The Spoken Word and Hip -Hop Lyrists of I Was Born With Two Tongues and the Mountain Brothers...… 174 5. Conclusion……………………………………………………… 211 End Notes.……………………………………………………..... 218 Works Cited…………………………………………………….. 242 vi VITA 1996 B.A., University of Texas, Austin 1998 M.A., University of Hawai’i, Manoa, summa cum laude 1999-2000 Teaching Assistant, Dimensions of Writing Program, University of California, San Diego 2002-2003 Senior Teaching Assistant, Dimensions of Writing Program, University of California, San Diego 2003 Center for Humanities Dissertation Fellowship 2002-2005 Lecturer, Office of Assistance and Instructional Support, University of California, San Diego 2005 Visiting Instructor, Women’s Studies Program, University of California, Irvine 2006 Ph.D. in Literature, University of California, San Diego PUBLICATIONS “Remembering and Re -imagining U-ma -ni: Constructions of the Female Body in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee,” East -West Center Conference Journal, Spring 1998, 12-33. FIELDS OF STUDY American Literature and U.S. Ethnic Literatures Asian American Studies, Asian Diaspora and Transnationalism Gender and Sexuality Studies Film, Visual Cu lture, and Cultural Studies vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Asian American and African American Masculinities: Race, Citizenship, and Culture in Post -Civil Rights By Chong Chon-Smith Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego 2006 Professor Lisa Lowe, Chair Through the interpretation of labor department documents, journalism, and state discourses, I historicize the formation of both the construction of black “pathology” and the Asian “model minority” by analyzing the compara tive racialization of African Americans and Asian Americans in the United States. Beginning with the Moynihan Report and journalistic reports about Asian Americans as “model minority,” Black and Asian men were racialized together, as if “racially magnetiz ed,” in an attempt to maintain U.S. liberalism and U.S. -powered globalization. The post -civil rights era names this specific race for U.S. citizenship and class advantage when state selection of Asian immigration and deindustrialization of the Black working class helped usher in viii a new period of depoliticized class struggle and racial realignment. As the state abandoned social programs at home and expanded imperial projects overseas, the post -civil rights moment was a period of danger and contradiction when Black radicalism and the Asian American Movement challenged the understanding that social equality through civil rights had been achieved. Thus, the discursive and representational containment of an Asian - Black radicalism had maintained a form of racial hierarchy and gender politics that reconstituted white supremacy and gender relations in post -civil rights. Through the concept of racial magnetism , this dissertation examines both dominant and emergent representations of Asian and African American mascu linities as mediating figures for the contradictions of race, class, and gender in post -civil rights U.S.A. While some reports pair together Black “pathology” and the Asian “model minority,” African American and Asian American counter -discourses of solidarity and identification—in literature, film, music and performance arts —link social movements to cultural production as active critical responses to these reports. Selected works and texts discussed include The Moynihan Report , Aiiieeeee! , No -No Boy, Rush Hour, Romeo Must Die , Yao Ming, Ichiro Suzuki, I Was Born With Two Tongues, and Mountain Brothers. ix 1 Introduction ---------*--------- The Architecture of Racial Magnetism: Constructing Post-Civil Rights Racialization “Citizens inhabit the political space of the nation, a space that is, at once, juridically legislated, territorially situated, and culturally embodied. Although the law is perhaps the discourse that most literally governs citizenship, U.S. national culture!the collectively forged images, histories, and narratives that place, displace, and replace individuals in relation to the national polity!powerfully shapes who the citizenry is, where they dwell, what they remember, and what they forget.” Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts. “Any progressive political project will have to address the racialization of politics and seek to challenge and deconstruct the racial meanings attached to, or embedded in, a range of issues, from immigration to foreign trade imbalances. In the post-civil rights era, such a progressive politics needs to reassess the adequacy of the original civil rights vision to deal with contemporary patterns of inequality. This would include an examination of the impact of class and class relations within and between racially defined groups and their meanings for race-specific remedies.” Michael Omi, “Racialization in the Post-Civil Rights Era.” “How does it feel like to be a solution?” Vijay Prashad, The Karma of Brown Folk. “It Isn’t Fair”: Vincent Chin and National Manhood On June 17, 1982, the final day before his wedding to Vikki Wong, twenty- seven year old Vincent Chin came face to face with Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz, two autoworkers in the once invincible car capital of Detroit, Michigan. Celebrating his bachelor party, Chin and his friends, Gary Koivu and Jimmy Choi, were in a festive mood and entered a bar called the Fancy Pants, a strip club located near the automobile factories. Inside, there were predominately blue-collar workers, including plant superintendent Ebens, who was visibly drunk and belligerent. He sat 1 2 across from Chin and saw in a swift and precise moment in time—as if on a Ford assembly line—the face of the enemy. Ebens yelled out racial epithets before finally accusing