History Commons^™

In recent years, Asian Americans have increasingly laid claim to a place in civil rights history. One strategy of this movement has been to renounce the black/white paradigm as a biracial model of race relations that no longer accurately describes contemporary America. In this essay, I suggest that the black/white paradigm is more compelling than commonly assumed, and explore six dimensions of the paradigm that speak to its contemporary relevance to the Asian American civil rights agenda.