Concrete Whiteness and Impossible Subjects

As I read this week's readings (Mae Ngai's Impossible Subjects, Claire Jean Kim's "The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans," and Nicholas De Genova's "Latino and Asian Formations at the Frontiers of U.S. Nationalism"), my mind kept running back to a concept of Paolo Freire's. Freire, a Brazilian educational/social-justice theorist, presents the concept of the "suboppressor" in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. This framework offered me great insight into the works covered in our course this week. Kim's definition of triangulation as "relative valorization" is an example of White people attempting to create a system of suboppressorship. A suboppressor class arises when a subjugated group adheres to the social roles and behaviors of the dominant oppressor class and perpetuates a cycle of oppression against another subjugated group. Kim talks about a dominant group (which she names as White) placing/naming one subordinate group as culturally and/or racially better than another in order to dominate both. She continues to describe the way that Black people were villainzed and Asian people sanctified in the process of maintenance of white dominance in America. Along with her analysis of the model minority myth, it becomes clear that White America (I am referring to the dominant whiteness here, not to all White folks) draws and rests its power on the insolidarity of other racial and ethnic groups.

All of this week's readings brought up and questioned both the insider/foreigner dynamic and the Black/White racial binary system in America. Ngai talks about impossible subjects who, despite being viewed as foreigners, exist within the American landscape. The idea of existence becomes crucial in linking this week's readings. De Genova talks about the genocide of Native Americans as a decimation but not an extermination; he says, "as if mass slaughter ever accomplished the end of absolute extermination and extinction" (2). Once an identity group is labeled as foreign, as decisively external to the American identity, the hegemonic nature of American whiteness as "American"-ness, as De Genova names it, is reaffirmed. In the process of trying to gain access to and inclusion within the American identity, groups have engaged in a process of adhesion to the oppressors'/White people's ideals, exhibiting sub-oppressive mentalities. The multiple court cases where non-White people argued for racial classification as White reflect this dynamic. These articles open the door to many questions. What constitutes assimilation? Has America ever been a melting pot, or is it a white dish surrounded by colorful garnishes on the margins? How does one have to represent herself in order to be associated with her racial group (this question is drawn from the Kim article--I'm curious as to why she says White people disassociate Asian people from carrying identity politics)?

Lastly, I was intrigued by the minimal attention paid to multiracial people in these authors' reflections on dismantling the black-white binary in the United States. While I recognize the importance of understanding the histories and legacies of the creation of racial labels and parameters ("Asian," "Latino," etc.), I was surprised at the lack of attention paid to people of mixed lineage in the United States. Granted, De Genova mentioned the Latino identity as one associated with miscegenation, but I would have liked something more. A key part of dismantling the racial binary system in the United States, in my opinion, is recognizing the legacy of extensive racial mixing in our country.