Shanshan Lan
http://www.asianamerican.northwestern.edu/people/faculty.html#shanshan
Learning Race and Class: Chinese Americans in Multiracial Bridgeport (2007)
Dissertation Abstract:
This research explores how Chinese Americans from different social stratum
negotiate the ideological and material impacts of race and racism in Bridgeport,
a multiracial working class immigrant community adjacent to Chicago's Chinatown.
Specifically, I observe that Chinese Americans in Bridgeport are subjected
to various and even contradictory experiences of racialization: they are
often racialized together with Latinos as "foreigners" who are
taking over the nation; as people of color side by side with African Americans;
and/or as a model minority in opposition to both Latinos and African Americans.
My research further documents that the Chinese American effort to navigate
shifting racial hierarchies in Bridgeport is marked by class distinctions:
middle class Chinese Americans often act as cultural brokers initiating new
immigrants into the dominant American race and class system.