This article brings to light discourses that constituted the education of Asian-American children in California in the second half of the nineteenth century. Guided by Foucaultian ideas and critical race theory, I analyze California public school laws, speeches of a governor-elect and a superintendent, and a report of the board of supervisors, from the 1860s to the 1880s. During this targeted period, the images and narratives of Asian-American children were inscribed with racism. Racializing politics rendered them to be disqualified from (...) attending public schools. Segregated schooling for them was legally ordered and therefore unquestioned. It was a discursive practice implemented on their bodies by dint of a mechanism of a spatial division. This article reveals the shifting dominancy of discourses regarding Asian-American children. Rather than accepting the given historical facts, I intend to reread historical texts in order to rethink the education of Asian-American children through a Foucaultian encounter with critical race theory. Acknowledging different interpretations of the past events is a way of rethinking them and interrogating the history through the revelation of different histories in the education for Asian-American children. (shrink)

This study explores how Asian American experiences are depicted in four high school U.S. history textbooks and four middle school U.S. history textbooks used in Virginia. The analytic framework was developed from the scholarship of collective memories and histories of immigration in Asian American studies. Content analysis of the textbooks suggests the overall narrative of Asian American history in U.S. history textbooks aligns with the grand narrative of American history, that is, the “story of progress.” This major storyline of Asian (...) Americans – that they suffered from nativist racism and discrimination for a long time, overcame these obstacles through their hard work and efforts, and achieved the American dream – fits well into the master narrative of American progress, highlighting the process of their belonging to the U.S. as citizens. This storyline misrepresents the realities and diversity among Asian ethnic groups and their migration histories as well as the fluid nature of their identities across national borders. These findings stress the continued challenges in representing Asian American experiences as well as other marginalized groups in U.S. history textbooks. (shrink)