Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South
Leslie Bow
Abstract
Arkansas, 1943. The Deep South during the heart of Jim Crow-era segregation. A Japanese-American person boards a bus, and immediately is faced with a dilemma. Not white. Not black. Where to sit? By elucidating the experience of interstitial ethnic groups such as Mexican, Asian, and Native Americans—groups that are held to be neither black nor white—this book explores how the color line accommodated—or refused to accommodate—“other” ethnicities within a binary racial system. Analyzing pre- and post-1954 American literature, film, autobiography, government documents, ethnography, photographs, an ... More
Arkansas, 1943. The Deep South during the heart of Jim Crow-era segregation. A Japanese-American person boards a bus, and immediately is faced with a dilemma. Not white. Not black. Where to sit? By elucidating the experience of interstitial ethnic groups such as Mexican, Asian, and Native Americans—groups that are held to be neither black nor white—this book explores how the color line accommodated—or refused to accommodate—“other” ethnicities within a binary racial system. Analyzing pre- and post-1954 American literature, film, autobiography, government documents, ethnography, photographs, and popular culture, the book investigates the ways in which racially “in-between” people and communities were brought to heel within the South's prevailing cultural logic, while locating the interstitial as a site of cultural anxiety and negotiation. Spanning the pre- to the post-segregation eras, this book traces the compelling history of “third race” individuals in the U.S. South, and in the process forces us to contend with the multiracial panorama that constitutes American culture and history.
Keywords:
Arkansas,
Jim Crow-era,
segregation,
interstitial ethnic groups,
color line,
binary racial system,
U.S. South
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2010 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780814791325 |
| Published to NYU Press Scholarship Online: March 2016 |
DOI:10.18574/nyu/9780814791325.001.0001 |
