More on Racism

[Rakesh Bhandari]

Retooling Georg Simmel's concept of the stranger, Robert Park, once the
doyen of American race relations, developed the concept of a 'marginal man'
who exists in the margins of two cultures. Asian Americans were oft
understood in such terms by American sociologists; yet instead of
emphasising the confusion that may result from such marginality, some even
took the marginal people to be the hope of the future, "the most important
individual capable of easing tensions between cultures" as Henry Yu puts
it. "moreover marginal men were not the products of a single culture, they
could understand other cultures without ethnocentricism. Cosmpolitan and
without prejudice, the marginal man's (sic) ability to empathize with all
sorts of people and with differing viewpoints was the most important
feature of a new urbanity and modernity in the world." Speaking of Asian
American sociologists who studied the "Oriental Problem" in pre WWII
America, Yu writes:
"The marginal man theory gave them only  only a powerful language for
describing their existential situation, but also a sense of purpose and
self worth. Many of the students had been caught in situations of self
loathing and had harbored feelings of worthlessness. Because of
discrimination, their career options were few, and they were extremely self
conscious of being different. For them, the marginal man theory was like a
release from bondage, naming them as the future and giving them the most
important role in race and cultural relations."

In K Scott Wong and Sucheng Chan, Claiming America: Constructing Chinese
American Identities during the Exclusion Era. Temple.

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