Visually Dual: The Conflicted Image of Asian American Representations

In Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America 2001 , Henry Yu observes the contradictory position Asian Americans occupy within western popular imagination understood as both a “racial ‘problem’ and as a racial ‘solution’” 7 . This dual role, embodied in the constructed images of the “enemy alien” and the “model minority,” has had significant historical consequences. The former manifested itself, for example, in the forced removal of Japanese Americans during World War II to American concentration camps, while the latter has had serious repercussions in the interactions among other racial minorities within the United States, who in comparison to the assumed success of Asian Americans are viewed as inferior.1 The constructed identities as both “enemy alien” and “model minority” are only two of the multiple racialized images that have served to prevent Asian Americans from full participation within American society.