Suchergebnisse

Chinese Americans came under suspicion in the mid-1990s with charges of involvement in a presidential campaign finance scandal & of spying in nuclear weapons laboratories. In these cases, no major figures were found guilty. These cases & earlier 19th-century cases involving Chinese Americans highlight the distinct modes of Asian racialization in America that are characterized by ideas of Asian inassimilability, the conflation of Asian Americans with Asian citizens, & the perception of Asian Americans as threats to American society. Asiatic racialization has been used in conjunction with techniques of citizenship nullification (the attribution of foreignness) to produce a climate in which genuine Asian American citizenship is impossible. M. Pflum

Despite perceptions that Asian Americans typically have eschewed American politics, but are very recently active, this view is not historically accurate. Three periods in Asian American political involvement are identified, focusing on the two largest groups -- the Chinese & Japanese: the mid-19th century to the mid-1920s, the mid-1920s to the late 1960s, & the late 1960s to the 1990s. The periods differ in the social profiles of the Asian American constituencies & in their relationship to politics. During the first period, Asian Americans had many of the same concerns as other immigrants, & were viewed as suspicious & as either hyperpolitical or apolitical. In the second period during WWII, the Japanese especially remained suspect & were even interned. On the other hand, their weak political identity was noted. Success stories of Chinese & Japanese Americans in the third period generated the perception of this group as model citizens, & they became more politically active & conscious of their identity within American society. 5 Tables. M. Pflum

In the wake of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, the Republican-controlled Congress was able to use the International Monetary Fund's need for capital to press for major reforms within that organization. The debate became more complicated when antiabortion advocates attempted to add antiabortion language to appropriation bills. In a showdown between the executive & legislative branches, Congress ultimately dropped the abortion language, but the issue of linking funding to abortion policy continues to surface in budgetary debates concerning international organizations.

Major trends in Asian Pacific American electoral participation in the 1990s are examined. In the Nov 1996 elections, Asian Pacific Americans achieved both positive recognition for the number of that group elected to office & the increase in their voter registration, & negative recognition for the implications of their involvement in campaign finance scandals. In comparison to other minorities & US-born citizens, recent Asian immigrants have lower rates of voter registration, but beyond second-generation Asian Americans, rates are higher than in other groups. Together with recent non-electoral political activity among Asian Americans, such as their drives for reparations from WWII internment camps, for revocation of admissions quotas for Asian Pacific American applicants to colleges, & for involvement in Asia-America relations, this data shows that this group, especially US-born Asian Americans, has growing political power. 5 Tables. M. Pflum

Several statistical sources are used to examine the population dynamics & acculturation process of the newly-minted immigrant voting majority in the Asian American community. Increases in adult immigrants & in voter registration among immigrants have led to the immigrant majority. Among the Asian American population, immigrant Asians are less likely to be Democrats & more likely to have no preference than are US-born Asians. However, where held, party affiliation was weak in this group & not necessarily predictive of political orientation. Because Asian immigrants are not strongly aligned with the civil rights movement, they pose a threat to progressive activists within the Asian American group. Alternative political forces, eg, Republican loyalists, are arising, as illustrated by the San Francisco Neighborhood Assoc case. 6 Tables. M. Pflum

The history of Asian Indian immigration to the US & their demographic & socioeconomic profiles are reviewed. Many well-educated Asian Indians have immigrated since 1965, but the family reunification clause has also drawn less-educated Asian Indians since the 1980s. The popular perception is that this minority group is apathetic politically, but they have established political organizations & gained office throughout the century. They are more geographically dispersed than other Asian Americans, but their political activity is concentrated in 8 states where they are most numerous, with CA at the top. Immigration, discrimination, & US relations with India are the main issues affecting Asian Indian Americans, but they are also concerned with important issues like the economy, crime, & education, per a 1996 survey. Recent organizational trends show that Asian Indians exhibit a growing empowerment. 10 Tables. M. Pflum

In an exploration of the deep politics of American foreign policy in Third World countries, the pattern of convergence of oil, & the prominence of drug trafficking proxies is asserted to have increased the importance of drug traffickers in world politics, & argues that parapolitics tends to metastasize into deep politics. A discussion of parapolitics in Afghanistan relates the US arming of the mujahedin to the increase of heroin production, & the increase of trafficking after every US military intervention. The correlations between US intervention & drug trafficking are traced through the protection of petrodollars & US-Saudi interdependence, the parallels of the 2001 resurgence of Afghan opium to Asian drug trafficking in 1979, 1959, 1950. The much studied American dependency on oil, & pattern of interventions that strengthen drug trafficking are concluded to guarantee that the US will confront new crises. Scholarship is proposed to determine whether these conditions resulted from past historical accidents or from a structural dependency, political financial or both, that is still active. J. Harwell