‘I'm American, not Japanese!’: the struggle for racial citizenship among later-generation Japanese Americans

Abstract

As one of the oldest Asian American groups in the USA, most Japanese Americans are of the third and fourth generations and have become well integrated in mainstream American society. However, they are still racialized as foreigners simply because of their Asian appearance. Their Asian phenotype continues to have a foreigner connotation because of large-scale immigration from Asia and an American national identity that is racially defined as white. This paper analyses how later-generation Japanese Americans are racialized as outsiders in their daily interaction with mainstream Americans, which is often accompanied by essentialized assumptions that they are also culturally foreign. In response, they engage in everyday struggles for racial citizenship by demanding inclusion in the national community as Americans despite their racial differences. It is uncertain whether such attempts to contest their racialization will cause current mono-racial notions of American identity to be reconsidered in more inclusive and multiracial ways.

Keywords:

• ethnic minorities
• racialization
• social citizenship
• racial citizenship
• Japanese Americans
• Asian Americans

Notes

1. The only exception is the small number of post-war shin-Nisei who have retained the Japanese language and remain actively engaged in Japan.

2. It seems that this does not always produce culturally assimilated subjects since the dual process of self-making and being made involves both a subject that submits to power relations but also contests and resists them.

3. They were seen as shorter with darker complexions and distinct facial features and hair colour compared to Anglo Americans (Jacobson 1999, pp. 39–90).

4. Even the Japanese Americans of mixed racial descent whom I interviewed felt that they were perceived as racially different and were not considered white.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Takeyuki Tsuda

TAKEYUKI TSUDA is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the School of Human Evolution & Social Change at Arizona State University.