Toward an Asian American Legal Scholarship: Critical Race Theory, Post-Structuralism, and Narrative Space

Abstract

Prelude ........................................... 3 Introduction: Mapping the Terrain ............................. 7 1. The Need for an Asian American Legal Scholarship ........ 11 A. That Was Then, This Is Now: Variations on a Theme .. 11 1. Violence Against Asian Americans ................. 12 2. Nativistic Racism .................................. 15 B. The Model Minority Myth ............................. 18 C. The Inadequacy of the Current Racial Paradigm ........ 25 1. Traditional Civil Rights Work ...................... 25 2. Critical Race Scholarships .......................... 26 Il. Narrative Space ........................................... 28 A. Perspective Matters ................................... 32 B. Resistance to Narrative ................................ 33 C. Epistemological Strategies .............................. 38 1. Arguing in the Rational/Empirical Mode ........... 39 2. Post-Structuralism and the Narrative Turn .......... 44 III. The Asian American Experience: A Narrative Account of Exclusion and Marginalization ............................. 46 A. Exclusion from Legal and Political Participation ........ 49 1. Immigration and Naturalization .................... 49 2. Disfranchisement .................................. 60 B. Speaking Our Oppression into (and out of) Existence ... 63 1. The Japanese American Internment and Redress .... 63 2. The Not So Model Minority ....................... 68 C. The Common Thread .................................. 72 IV. Toward an Asian American Legal Scholarship .............. 74 A. Stage One: Denial ..................................... 76 B. Stage Two: Affirmation ................................ 78 C. Stage Three: Liberation ................................ 81 Coda .......................................................... 82