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Yellow

By Frank H. Wu
2001, 288 pages, hardback.
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Book Description from the Front Cover Flap

The days when racial dialogue in the United States was limited to a discussion of black and white are through. As the twenty-first century dawns, the Asian-American population is growing at a faster rate than any other demographic, increasing by 48% throughout the 1990s and altering the nature of American color politics forever.

Writing in the tradition of W.E.B. Du Bois, Cornel West, and others who confronted the "color line" of the twentieth century, journalist, scholar, and activist Frank H. Wu offers a unique perspective on how changing ideas of racial identity will affect race relations in the new century.

Wu's description of the alienation faced by Asian Americans tackles key milestones in history, such as the 1940s internment camps and the 1992 L.A. riots, as well as surprising statistics about the continuing prevalence of anti-Asian sentiment. In May 2001, a major national survey of highly educated individuals showed that almost half of all Americans believe that Chinese Americans are likely to pass secret information to China. About a third agree that Chinese Americans are probably more loyal to China than to the United States, and few distinguish between Chinese Americans and other Asians.

Yellow looks at the problems of racial diversity with a new focus, elevating the age-old debate from its formerly static terms. Wu examines affirmative action, globalization, immigration and other controversial contemporary issues through the lens of the Asian-American experience. Mixing personal anecdotes, legal cases, and journalistic reporting, Wu confronts damaging Asian-American stereotypes such as "the model minority" and "the per-petual foreigner." By offering new ways of thinking about race in American society, Wu's work dares us to make good on our great democratic experiment.

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Comments from Back Cover

"Frank Wu has written a book that can be rightfully compared to W.E.B. DuBois's Souls of Black Folk a century ago... Anyone interested in the issues of our increasing diversity--whether Asian American or not--should want to finish it in a single sitting."
-DON T. NAKANISHI, Director, UCLA Asian American Studies Center

"Frank Wu's perceptive, provocative and highly readable book is a unique contribution to our understanding of the Asian-American experience."
-STANLEY KARNOW, author of In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines

"Frank Wu writes with power, intelligence and a keen wit. Whether he is dis-cussing the 'model minority myth,' the World War II internment of Japanese Americans, the recent 'Chinese Spy' case, affirmative action and Asian Americans, intermarriage and the mixed race movement---or answering the question 'Do Asians eat dogs?' --Wu is illuminating, insightful and knowledgeable."
-YALE KAMISAR, Clarence Darrow Distinguished University Professor, University of Michigan Law School

"Wu's sobering, astute, compelling investigation locates the particulars of Asian-American experience with racism in this country's spectrum of ethnic and cultural prejudice."
-PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

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Background on Frank H. Wu

FRANK H. WU is the first Asian American to serve as a law professor at Howard University Law School. He has written for a range of publications including The Washington Post, The L.A. Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Nation, and writes a regular column for Asian Week. Wu participated in a major debate against Dinesh D'Souza on affirmative action that was televised on C-Span and was the host of the syn-dicated talk show Asian America on PBS. He lives in Washington, DC.

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