Michigan Journal of Race and Law Volume 2 1997 Deconstructing the Ideology of White Aesthetics John M. Kang University of Michigan Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjrl Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Law and Race Commons, and the Law and Society Commons Recommended Citation John M. Kang, Deconstructing the Ideology of White Aesthetics, 2 MICH. J. RACE & L. 283 (1997). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjrl/vol2/iss2/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Michigan Journal of Race and Law by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DECONSTRUCTING THE IDEOLOGY OF WHITE AESTHETICS John M. Kang* In this Article, the author provides a discussion on the dynamic be- tween race and aesthetics. The author states that because Whites are the dominant group in America, they dictate what is beautiful. The conse- quence of this power dynamic is that the dominant group, Whites, can exercise preferences in deciding how to look or express themselves, whereas people of color are limited to either conforming to an imposed White standard or rejecting it. The author starts by laying out some of the features to what he terms the "ideology of White aesthetics." He then commences to examine how this ideology has played out in Black- White relations and in relations between Asian Americans and Whites, and how it may be used to shed new light both on race relations and on behavior within communities of color. The author concludes by address- ing potential counter-arguments. * B.A. 1992, University of California at Berkeley; J.D. 1996, University of California at Los Angeles School of Law; Ph.D. precandidate, Political Science, University of Michigan. Individuals at the UCLA School of Law and the University of Michigan have generously offered to read earlier drafts of this Article and have provided in- sightful suggestions and comments. For their efforts, I would like to thank the follow- ing people: Antonio Brown, Laura Gomez, Artiom Magun, Stephen Munzer, Kim Smith, and Elizabeth Wingrove. I also had an opportunity to present and discuss this Article with other graduate students in January 1997. I would like to thank Michigan's Graduate Student Organization for Asian Pacific American Studies and the Asian Pacific American Studies Program for providing a setting in which I could discuss my project. I would also like to express my appreciation to the thought-provoking audience at that meeting. In particular, I am grateful for the comments of Jason Chu, Christine Garza, Larry Hashima, and Cristine Paschild. As for the editing process, I thank Yong Lee, Valarie Tatem, and Troy Yoshino of the Michigan Journal of Race & Law for their helpful suggestions. Hanna Jun at the UCLA School of Law provided earlier stylistic comments on this Article. I also thank my old friend Paras P. Mehta for helping me to locate sources as well as offering his own books. Finally, my fondest appreciation goes to the members of my wonderful and supportive family, and this Article, its modest character notwithstanding, is dedicated to them. For giving me a loving and happy environment in which I could pursue my graduate studies, I thank my amazing parents, Hyun Ja Kang and Stanley H. Kang, as well as my indomitable brother Peter H. Kang. Michigan Journal of Race & Law [VOL. 2:283 IN TRO D U C TIO N ................................................................................... 285 I. DEFINING THE IDEOLOGY OF WHITE AESTHETICS ................................ 287 A. Normative Content of Aesthetics .................................................... 288 B. Negative Self-Identification and Racialization................................ 288 C. Appropriatingthe Voice of Aperspectivity...................................... 292 D. The Deculturalizationof Racial Aesthetic Expression.................... 295 1. Immigrant Analogy or Assimilationist Theory .................... 295 2. Internal Colonialism Theory ................................................... 296 II. WHITE OVER BLACK: THE PROCESS OF PROJECTION AND GIVING NORMATIVE CONTENT TO SKIN COLOR .............................................. 298 A . Black and W hite in Europe.............................................................. 298 B. Physical Exclusion: To Preserve the "Lovely White" .................... 301 C. Legal Exclusion: Tort Damagesfor Injuring White Aesthetic Dignity .............................. 305 III. OBJECTIVITY IN THE IDEOLOGY OF WHITE AESTHETICS: ITS SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES ........................ 306 A. InternalizingAesthetic Values: Ugly People Don't Deserve to Have Rights ............................................. 307 B. The Limits of Aesthetic Expression: Those Who Can Prefer, Those Who Cannot....................................................... 311 1. The Objective Nature of White Women's Beauty ................ 312 2. The Naturalness and Immutability of White Features ....... 314 3. Deculturalization and Appropriation of Black A esthetics ...................................................................316 4. More Than Hair: Black Power and Political Defiance ........ 318 5. Example of Amusement: Tanning ......................................... 320 IV. ASIAN AMERICANS AND THEIR EARLY H ISTORY OF DISCRIMINATION ............................................................. 322 A . Excluding the Yellow Peril............................................................. 323 B. Anti-Miscegenation Laws: White Beauty as Sacred Commodity ............................................... 325 C. "American" Means White: Japanese Internment ........................... 326 D. Legal Justification: The Unmediated Voice of the Loyal Patriot.......................................................... 327 E. Media Influence During World War II and Beyond: Deviatingfrom the Objective Norm of W hite A esthetics.......................................................................... 330 F. Internalizing Our Deviance and Accepting the Objective Nature of W hite A esthetics .......................................................................... 333 1. Surgery: Aquiline Noses and Larger Eyes ............................ 333 2. D eculturalization ...................................................................... 338 V. RACIAL EXOTICISM AND RACIAL ACCEPTANCE: THE DIFFERENCES AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE ................................................................... 339 A. Femininity,Masculinity and the Body: The Constructionof Gender Identity and Its Relationship to Bodily Aesthetics ............. 339 SPRING 19971 DeconstructingWhite Aesthetics B. Black Masculinity: The Early European Metaphor of Beasts .........340 C. The Ambivalence of Masculinity: Viewing Black Men as Heroes......................................................... 342 D. Asian and Asian American Men: "Without Sinful Manhood" .....345 1. Early Stereotypes ......................................................................345 2. Asian American Men Today: Chan Is Not Dead .................347 E. Asian American Women: All the Butterflies-Madame, Miss, and M ....................................349 F. Black Women and Feminine Bodily Aesthetics: The Problematic Equationof Blackness and M asculinity in W hite Society ...................................................353 CO N CLU SIO N ........................................................................................357 "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, "'--thatis all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' -John Keats INTRODUCTION In 1819, through these pithy lines, the English poet John Keats inserted himself into Western literary history. There is something about Keats' simple lines that resonate with us. He claims that beauty and truth are the same. Moreover, he tells us that his bold axiom is the basis, and limit, of our epistemology: it is all we need to know. But what exactly do we know? What is "beauty"? And what is "truth"? Are they in fact the same thing? If not, what is the rela- tionship between these two? Can these two things be enough for us to comprehend reality and existence as Keats eloquently proclaims? This Article explores these questions within the context of race, bodily appearances, political power, and the law. As will be shown, throughout America's history, the terms "beauty" and "truth" were either explicitly or implicitly employed in political rhetoric and ju- dicial opinions in order to construct subordinating images of people of color, justify legal oppression, and perhaps most profoundly, produce an epistemology of racial bodily aesthetics that, to some degree, possibly alienated people of color from their own bodies be- cause they failed to resemble those of White people.' 1. John Keats, Ode to a Grecian Urn, in MAJOR BRITISH POETS 196-97 (Oscar Wil- hams ed., 1963). 2. Throughout this Article, I use the term "White people" to describe White Ameri- cans, White Europeans, as well as people who derive from such ancestry and who possess those physical features that would generally distinguish them morphologi- cally as belonging to such ancestry. Of course, the reader may object that given our Michigan Journal of Race & Law [VOL. 2:283 More specifically, the thesis of this Article is that with respect to using one's body as