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ABSTRACT
This study examines whether different editions of college introductory American government/politics textbooks have increased coverage of Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) over time. Using content analysis, I analyze the percentage of coverage of APAs in the same textbooks’ editions published during 1998−1999, 2005−2006, and 2011−2012. I find that the coverage of APAs has increased gradually, although its magnitude is not very large. Mentions of APAs are found most often on the chapters of civil rights, demography/political culture, public opinion, and elections/voting/participation. Textbooks vary as to how they raised or dropped ranks of coverage compared to the previous period. Some textbooks created a new section to discuss APA history. One textbook used the Korematsu case in one period but discontinued it in a later edition. These analyses show that if textbook authors have a will to do so, they can increase coverage of APAs. Indeed, McClain and Tauber’s introductory textbook (2017) discusses in detail how American politics affect racial and ethnic minority groups. Other authors should make similar efforts and make racial and ethnic groups one of the central themes of textbooks.
Acknowledgements
I thank the three anonymous reviewers, Andrew L. Aoki, Pei-te Lien, Sherri L. Wallace, Makiko Deguchi, and the participants of the Immigration Study Group (Imin Kenkyukai) held in Tokyo. This piece is a sequel to Takeda (Citation2015), which was commissioned by the Committee of the Status of Asian Pacific Americans in the Profession of the American Political Science Association. A former member of the committee who strongly encouraged me to analyze textbooks was the late Don T. Nakanishi; therefore, I dedicate this piece to him. All errors are mine.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Although the House of Representative’s list does not include Robert Scott (D-VA, one quarter Filipino), I include him toward the number of APA voting members.
2 For example, on APA politics in California, see Nakanishi (Citation1991) and Brackman and Erie (Citation1995). On the “suburban Chinatown” in Monterey Park, California, see Fong (Citation1994) and Horton (Citation1995). On public policies, see LEAP and UCLA Asian American Studies Center (Citation1993, Citation1994). And on voting behavior, see Cain, Kiewiet, and Uslaner (Citation1991), Cho (Citation1995), and Lien (Citation1997).
3 I looked at newer versions of a few textbooks that Takeda (Citation2015) used, but did not find major differences in their contents.
4 In addition, choosing a time point earlier than 1998 significantly reduces the number of comparable textbooks. For example, among the 28 textbooks used by Takeda (Citation2015), only 11 textbooks were published (by nearly the same sets of authors) in 1990.
5 The list of textbooks examined as Appendix A (in the form of supplementary data online) at: https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2018.1494008.
6 I measured “a fraction of page” by counting the number of lines of APA-related sentences. If, for example, a textbook has 2 columns and 40 lines in each column, and 12 lines have APA-related sentences, the mention is 12/80 = 0.15 pages. If an APA-sentence spills over to the next page, that additional sentence is counted as only an additional fraction of a page.
If there is a featured box outside the main text, I first gauge how long the column is vertically, and then determine how much fraction of a page a box is. If, for example, a textbook page is 9.75 inches long and a box is 6.5 inches long, the box would be two-thirds of the page (6.5/9.75 = 0.667). Then if an APA mention (measured by lines, as stated above) is 20 percent of the box, the fraction of the page devoted to APAs would be 0.2 × 0.667 = 0.133 pages.
Finally, pictures, figures, charts, and graphs in which APAs appear are not included toward the number of pages, although I did count them. I do not report them partly because they do not show a particular pattern of increase or decrease over the three periods, and partly because pictures or graphs do not always convey the same kind of information about APAs, as sentences in the text.
7 When I presented an earlier version of this manuscript in a conference, one textbook author was in the audience. Responding to my argument, he said, “there is a structure of the textbook dictated by the market and I can’t change it.”
8 The percentage is calculated by dividing the page counts by the total number of pages in the textbook, but the textbook total page number does not include the pages devoted to the U.S. Constitution and the Federalists 10 and 51, which are often appended at the end of textbooks.
9 Some textbooks discuss the history of APAs in a chapter on foreign and defense policy, which explains why this is the only chapter in the public policy section that has a substantial number of pages of mentions of APAs.
10 However, some textbooks fail to discuss this serious civil rights violation at all.
11 Mineta resigned from his position effectively in August 2006 to take a private position.
12 On the low end, the Katznelson et al. (2002, 2006, 2011) text’s near-zero mention of APAs is noteworthy, given that Katznelson (Citation2005) himself has published a book whose central theme is race. The lack of attention in Katznelson’s American government text may be because it focuses on tensions between corporate capitalism and democracy, with many other political concerns omitted.
13 One reviewer pointed out that the best way to learn why they no longer used the Korematsu case is to ask the authors. While I agree that this could be effective, I confine my analysis largely to what can be observed from a reading of the textbooks, in part because textbook authors may not remember why they added or deleted material in editions more than ten years ago. Also, in most cases (Welch et al.’s being the exception), the reasons for the change in coverage seems clearly tied to the fact that an issue had recently attracted a great deal of news coverage, or the issue was no longer receiving much attention.
14 As Takeda (Citation2016, 394) points out, some textbooks discuss APAs as if current research on APA politics does not exist. For example, Wilson, Dilulio, and Bose (2013, 172) argue that “despite the country’s growing Asian population, there is as yet virtually no literature on Asian American public opinion.” This textbook goes on to state: “[h]owever, an early survey of ethnic groups in California, a state where fully one-third of all recent immigrants to this country live, gives us some hint of how Latinos and Asian Americans feel about political parties and issues.” The survey cited is from Cain and Kieweit (Citation1986). Needless to say, a significant amount of research on APA politics has been published between 1986 and 2013.