Essay Prompts: 1. Essay #1: Analyze the factors that shap interracial relations and how this is impacted by beliefs in certain racial hierarchies. What conditions in Asian led to interracial contact and sexual relation between Americans and Asians and how did this change the demographic population of the Asian American community? Using lecture materials, describe why and how antimiscegenation laws in the United States tried to keep the races separate and how individuals challenged these policies? How has Asia treated “Amerasians” and what has been the perception of multiracial children in the U.S? How has the U.S Census changed their categorization of multiracial populations and why is this multiracial category so controversial as discussed by Hiram Perez in “How to Rehabilitate a Mullatto: The Iconography of Tiger Woods”? As covered in class lecture, how do racial hierarchies and capitalism impact transnational beauty cultures and why are some beauty practices controversial? According to the class lecture on adoption and the Sara Dorow reading, “Why China? Identifying Histories of Transnational Adoption,” discuss what factors leds to the adoption of children from Vietnam, South Korea and China and some of the controversies involves with these addoptions.
2. Essay #2: Discuss some of the crucial race relation issues facing our communities and how Asian American are impacted. Critically examine the factors that led to the Los Angeles Uprising/Civil Unrest and the consequences of racial confict as depicted in the class lectures and in the reading by Helen Zia in “To Market, to Market, New York Sytle” (chapter 4) & “Lost and Found in L.A” (chapter 7); Elaine H. Kim in “Home is Where the Han is: A Korean American Perspective on the Los Angeles Upheavals”; and the video Wet Sand: Voices from LA Ten Years Later. Analyze how racial perceptions can negatively impact Hmong Americans in A Dialogue between Anthropologist Louisa Schein and Filmmaker/Activist Va-Megn Thoj, “Occult Racism: The Masking of Race in the Hmong Hunter Incident” in AASN (chapter 22). Additionally, elaborate on the diversity of the South Asian American population in Sunaina Maira, “Youth Culture, Citizenship, and Globalization: South Asian Muslim Youth in the United States After September 11th” in AASN (chapter 17) and how racial misperceptions overlook these differences. According to Gary Okihiro, “When and Where I Enter” (chapter 1) in AASN and Angelo N. Ancheta, “Neither Black Nor White” in AASN (chapter 2) why is it important to understand black-white relations and to consider how Asian Americans add to the complexities of race relations
