Asian Americans

Does race still matter? In the United States, legal categories of race continue to multiply. Have these official definitions, once constructed by a white majority for exclusionary and oppressive ends, successfully transformed into tools for enforcing civil rights? After a historical background, Lott gives a detailed explanation of the origins and implications of Directive 15 - a critical juncture in the recent legal development of census and national data categories.

She then turns to the complexities of Asian American identities, deconstructing widely accepted minority/majority classifications, and historicizing the changing definitions of those labels.