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This book has illustrated details of various Asian American–white relationships. Asian American–white intimacy shares more commonalities than differences with same-race relationships. It is similar to same-race intimacy in that is shaped by ideologies of gender, marriage, and family more than by race. But it is also different, and not because of essential racial and ethnic differences but because of the continuing impact of historically produced discourses and images of race, compounded by discourses of nation, citizenship, and immigration. Structural inequalities have emerged distinctively through the surroundings of, and gendered patterns within, Asian American–white American intimacy. As the central force behind love, marriage, family, and nation, the logic of patriarchy/gender has shaped the exchanges of racialized images and power dynamics within Asian American–white interracial couples. Racialized images emerge as a critical part of mutual attraction, and then are incorporated into the gender dynamics. Gendered immigration laws and narratives of nation and citizenship, in which white males are cast in the positions of authority, seem to continue to affect public receptions of interracial relationships and gender dynamics, particularly with regard to foreign-born Asian American women’s marriages to white men. In my interviews, white men coupled with Asian American women reported little experience with negative perceptions and racism, but some white women coupled with Asian American men had negative social receptions. The Asian American women–white men couples’ lack of encounters with racism could be partly due to mainstream society’s acceptance of Asian American women. But the same women who reported little racism as part of a couple still offered accounts of how they suffered from racism individually. Thus, these Conclusion Matters of Race and Gender 155 156 racing romance couple’s experiences may have more to do with racialized white male authority than with a lessening of racism per se. Indeed, to conflate the American public’s acknowledgment of white men’s choice of Asian American women with a lessening of racism serves to protect the hegemonic orders of race and gender, in which women of color continue to be seen as second-class citizens. It should be noted that, in some cases, it was precisely this authorial position of gender and race from which some white men pursued Asian women. White men’s stereotypes of Asian American women as hyperfeminine and subservient remain persistent, and some Asian American women are wary of them. In interviews, they expressed an aversion to some white men’s imposition of these stereotypes, and the attendant commodification of these women. Foreign-born Asian American women who lack class mobility, language skills, and knowledge of U.S. racism and sexism were more likely to submit to such expectations and unequal marriages. In contrast, the young second-generation Asian American women in relationships with white men wanted egalitarianism. Among second-generation Asian American women who date white men, the notion of Asian American women “marrying up” by partnering with white men is considered an outdated stereotype, since many of these women have higher educational degrees and/or socioeconomic status than have their white partners. This old stereotype falsely essentializes Asian American women as inferior and naturalizes their gendered subjugation to higher-status men. However, this study did not find sufficient evidence to determine how truly egalitarian these second-generation Asian American women’s relationships were. As only one of the couples that I interviewed lived together as an engaged couple, I was unable to further discuss how American-born Asian American women’s marriages to white men differ from those of foreign-born Asian American women. Such a binary generalization may not work, since factors that affect gender dynamics are women’s education, income, careers, and cultural and language proficiency. But I would emphasize that, though the second-generation young Asian Americans proclaimed themselves to be upwardly mobile and independent subjects, and expressed a preference for white men for their egalitarian traits lacking in Asian American men, the women’s preference for white men as protective breadwinner figures, or as liberators, remains highly traditional. The discourse of whiteness did not simply emerge as a signifier of white supremacy or explicit white dominance, but, rather, operated more subtly through an intersection with gender. A social and cultural emphasis on multiculturalism and color-blind discourses in intimate and marital relationships obscured not solely the powers of race but also those of gender within relationships . Many white men interviewed for the study saw Asian American women...

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