Spectrum Series: Race and Ethnicity in National and Global Politics – serie

Asian Americans are emerging as a political force and yet their politics have not been systematically studied by either social scientists or politicians. Asian American politics transcend simple questions of voting behavior and elective office, going all the way back to early immigration laws and all the way forward to ethnic targeting. For the first time, this book brings together original sources on key topics influencing Asian American politics, knit together by expert scholars who introduce each subject and place it in context with political events and the greater emerging literature. Court cases, legislation, demographics, and key pieces on topics ranging from gender to Japanese American redress to the Los Angeles riots to Wen Ho Lee round out this innovative reader on a politically active group likely to grow in number and electoral impact.

'You're fired!' became the catch phrase in the spring of 2004 as NBC's The Apprentice captured public and media attention. Even though The Apprentice was not exclusively about race, it communicated and reinforced racial messages that are part and parcel of the dominant American ideology. No matter which minority group is represented, the media in America offer the same bill of fare: first, exclusion; followed by stereotyping that makes a sharp distinction between 'good' minority members and 'bad' ones; and finally, the telling of stories that justify racial inequality in American society. Media & Minorities looks at all these tendencies with an eye to identifying the 'system-supportive' messages conveyed and offering challenges to them. The book covers all major media—including television, film, newspapers, radio, and magazines—and systematically analyzes their representation of the four largest minority groups in the United States: African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. Entertainment media are compared and contrasted with news media, and special attention is devoted to coverage of social movements for racial justice and politicians of color. Political communication scholar Stephanie Greco Larson brings sharp insight into how the white-dominated media do a disservice to all their audiences when it comes to their representation of racial and ethnic minorities. She gives us ammunition for decoding the dominant messages and then combating them, whether through political activism, 'culture jamming,' or the creation and patronage of alternative media. Larson encourages readers to fight the misleading media messengers, saying 'you're fired!' to media that undermine racial equality.

Native nations, like the Navajo nation, have proven to be remarkably adept at retaining and exercising ever-increasing amounts of self-determination even when faced with powerful external constraints and limited resources. Now in this fourth edition of David E. Wilkins' The Navajo Political Experience, political developments of the last decade are discussed and analyzed comprehensively, and with as much accessibility as thoroughness and detail. The Diné people and their governing leaders have recently experienced a host of events that dramatically affected the shape of the nation – a plethora of effective grassroots organizations that had a profound impact on the structure of the Navajo political system, a dramatic reduction in the size of the legislative branch from eighty-eight to twenty-four members, the introduction of institutional gambling, unresolved battles over water rights, and a tense political crisis that pitted the legislative branch against the judicial branch as the court sought to ensure that the Fundamental Law was to be adhered to by all governing bodies. These and other developments are examined in this new edition, which includes three new appendices : The Navajo Fundamental Law of 2002; The Diné Natural Resource Protection Act of 2005; and Nelson v. Shirley (2010), which add to the book's value as a classroom tool and a primary source.