“As a result of this turn, it became possible to talk about a group’s culture without disavowing any claims about its intrinsic racial nature, although overtly racial claims certainly persisted, as the earlier discussion of civic ostracism demonstrated” (Kim, 117).
As Claire Jean Kim explains the dominating facilitation of the field of racial positions from 1965 to today, she reveals a trick that public opinion-makers often employed in order to continue making racial claims under a guise of colorblind, objective assessments. This quote precedes several examples of how time after time core tenets of different Asian cultures and beliefs were assumed to be held by massive people groups who were praised as the “model minority” by many journalists and scholars. These hardly substantiated talks allowed for the simultaneous racist ostracization and valorization of these Asian Americans, doing so “under the radar” without emulating the style of past racial claims.
The identification of this trope is key to her core argument of the continuation of the field of racial positions in the modern era, as it sorts a chronology of offenses as well as revealing the historical motivations behind them.
“A chronology of offenses”. This is a brilliant way of framing Kim’s historical lens. I also love that you decided to focus your blog on the latter parts of her paper, as I think non-colored language, and that the “trickery” of linguistic intentions, are less obvious, but require identification, as this style of rhetoric is most relevant to society today! Great work overall. 🙂
I like how you refer to the racial ostratization as going “under the radar” due to the manipulation and differentiation of what type of racism each minority group has to face. Couldn’t have summed this up any better!!