The heathen, the plague, and the model minority
Perpetual self-assessment of Asian Americans as a panoptic mechanism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3867919 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yuen-Yung Sherry Chan (0000-0001-7671-6740, University of Wisconsin–Madison, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 265-283 |
| Publication date | 2021-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Critical Research on Religion (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2050-3032 • E-ISSN: 2050-3040 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/20503032211044436 |
| OpenAlex | W3208791874 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 29 |
Incidents of racism against Asians have been rising since the COVID-19 pandemic turned global in early 2020. Employing Foucault's concept of panopticism and Kathryn Lofton's insights on the function of religion to demarcate group boundaries, this article argues that American religion constructs Asian American stereotypes to limit the discursive space within which Asian Americans may negotiate their identities. These discursive limitations have, in turn, buttressed white supremacy. This article examines how some Asians and Asian Americans respond to anti-Asian sentiments during the pandemic by performing a close reading of an op-ed by prominent Asian American politician Andrew Yang in The Washington Post. This reading reveals that Yang's colorblind solution upholds whiteness as the American gnosis and limits the discursive space in which Asian Americans may negotiate their identities. This article also discusses how the myth of America as a white Christian country withstands challenges from minority groups contesting its dominance
Asian americans · Ethnic group · Mythology · Negotiation · Political science · Racism · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Gender Studies · History · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Racial and Ethnic Identity Research
Strangers in the Land Patterns of American Nativism 1800-1925
What White Looks Like
The Color of Success
Consuming Religion
Saving Face
The White Racial Frame
Myth of the Model Minority
Racial Formation in the United States
They Licked the Platter Clean”
The “Yellow Peril” Mystique
Religion and the Creation of Race and Ethnicity
To Win Redeemed Souls from Heathen Darkness
White Too Long
The Beginnings of Nativism in California
American Literary History
Frankenstein, racial science, and the yellow peril
Stereotyping Asian Americans
From Yellow Peril through Model Minority to Renewed Yellow Peril
From bi-racial to tri-racial
American Heathens
Language, Counter-Memory, Practice
The Invention of World Religions
Second-Generation Korean American Evangelicals
The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans
Latinos/as and White Racial Frame
Are Asians the New Blacks
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |