A spectrum apart : Chinese and Japanese American republicans and conservatives, 1920-1990
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Although Asian Americans today are the fastest-growing racial group in the US electorate, historians of Asian American politics have generally neglected the electoral realm in favor of studying labor, culture, and revolutionary or anti-colonial diasporic and transnational activism. After all, many Asians were disenfranchised until race-based bans on their naturalization were lifted piece by piece from 1943 to 1952. Yet a small and influential cohort of Chinese and Japanese Americans in California with birthright citizenship set the tone of Asian American politics from the 1930s to 1970s. Drawing on archival collections, newspapers, and oral histories and interviews, this dissertation analyzes their experiences to offer the first history of Asian American electoral politics. It argues that Chinese and Japanese American voters carefully operated within the limits of acceptable political expression set by geopolitical dynamics and racial norms. They sought to soften the impacts of racial subordination by working within established political structures, framing their goals with conservative arguments, and cooperating with the Republicans who dominated California politics to carefully create piecemeal change without threatening the status quo. However, the constructions of race and ethnicity that Asian Americans developed to become legible political constituents also limited their potential arguments and allies, with pivotal implications for their participation in both liberal and conservative political movements. Together, race and ethnicity refracted the left-right spectrum of mainstream American politics into distinct experiences, interpretations, and choices. By integrating insights and questions from scholarship on modern conservatism, multiracial civil rights struggles, and transpacific Cold War-era transformations in the US racial order, this work underscores the diversity of Asian American political thought and experience.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2022; ©2022 |
| Publication date | 2022; 2022 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Yan, Vivian Sin Mei |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Chang, Gordon H |
| Thesis advisor | Chang, Gordon H |
| Thesis advisor | Burns, Jennifer, 1975- |
| Thesis advisor | Carson, Clayborne, 1944- |
| Degree committee member | Burns, Jennifer, 1975- |
| Degree committee member | Carson, Clayborne, 1944- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of History |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Vivian Yan-Gonzalez. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of History. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2022. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/nx062wb4589 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2022 by Vivian Sin Mei Yan
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...