Conference Schedule

Conference Session: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

Saturday, April 12, 2008 9:00A.M. Conference Begins

Registration

Kellogg Lobby

10:30 – 11:50 A.M. (Session One) Heritage Room 

At the Crossroads: Asian-Latino and Immigration Intersections

“Citizenship Projects: Coalition, Divergence and the Politics of Social Service”

This article is based on six months’ participant observation fieldwork in the Chinese American Cultural Center (CACC), a nonprofit social service agency in Chicago’s Chinatown. It explores CACC’s participation in the New Americans Initiative (NAI), a citizenship drive sponsored by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), a Latino-led grassroots immigrant advocacy organization. By examining the divergent citizenship projects pursued by the Coalition, the social service agency (CACC), and Chinese immigrant workers themselves, it foregrounds U.S. citizenship as a contested terrain in which Chinese Americans with distinct class interests articulate and negotiate their membership and sense of belonging in an increasingly multiracial U.S. nation-state. CACC’s participation in the Coalition also points to the differential racializations of Chinese Americans and Latinos (mainly Mexican Americans) in the United States: while illegal immigration is highlighted by mainstream media as a big problem within the Mexican immigrant community, it was suppressed within the Chinese community. Additionally, the Chinese American community’s divergent views of U.S. citizenship also limited coalition building between the two groups based on a shared political agenda.

 

“Sober, Industrious, and Altogether Inoffensive”:  Japanese and Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest, 1900-1945”

By the end of World War II approximately one million Mexicans, Japanese, enemy aliens, and prisoners of war labored on the home front under assorted local, state, and federal agencies in an effort to resolve the wartime labor shortage in agriculture and other important industries. Yet, long before the outbreak of WWII Japanese and Mexican labor had been utilized in the Pacific Northwest.  The decades leading up to WWII represent a period when the Japanese and Mexicans went through a process of racialization that was not only cultural, but economic as well. This paper will argue that for the Japanese and Mexicans this racialization was predicated on the development of whiteness and, more importantly, who could claim it. Furthermore, as Japanese and Mexicans challenged the hegemony of whiteness along the Pacific coast, laws were created to ensure their subordination and to obstruct their path to economic independence. Lastly, this paper will describe the resistance to this otherness and how Japanese and Mexicans created coalitions to combat prejudice and discrimination on the home front during World War II.

 

“Generational Intersections at Angel Island”

Angel Island now rests quietly as a State Park amidst the urban landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area. Most park visitors enjoy the natural beauty as they hike, bike, or sail and may not be aware of the numerous intersections that once took place on the island.   Angel Island was once a federal focal point of military, medicinal, and migration operations, serving as a Civil War and World War II military base, a medical quarantine station, and an immigration processing and deportation station.

Angel Island is also the point of intersection of two Chinese American scholar activists, Him Mark Lai and Paul Chow. These two men were born five years apart in San Francisco Chinatown during the period of Chinese Exclusion, yet they walk down two distinctly different paths as second generation “American Born Chinese.” One tried his best to culturally assimilate to the mainstream norms of San Francisco, while the other was a studious researcher of all things Chinese. During the Ethnic Studies movements of the late 1960s, their paths intersected at Angel Island –the site where their parents were once detained as “paper sons.” Through their activism and scholarship, both men helped shape a growing community movement to preserve Asian Pacific American historic sites, transforming Angel Island from an island of shame to a federally designated National Historic Landmark honoring the complex social history of Chinese Americans.

^

10:30 – 11:50 A.M. (Session Two) Willy Room

Re-imagining Asian American Identities: Music, Film and Literature

“‘Mister Singh and Mister Chin:’ The Subject of the Asian Grocer in Reggae Music”

Reggae music is often presented as a product of the African Diaspora. However, upon close examination of liner notes of compact discs, the role of Asians in the production of reggae music is revealed. The recovery of such productions reveals a longstanding preoccupation with Black Nationalism at the expense of Asians (Chinese and Indo-Jamaicans) within reggae music. As a result, reggae music is presented as a black cultural endeavor.

My work contends that history of Caribbean and creation of reggae music reaches beyond the African Diaspora.  Through the investigation of indentured laborers of Indian and Chinese descent, the convergence of both the African and Asian Diaspora emerge.  Furthermore, ethnic stratification between Jamaicans allows for Indo and Chinese Jamaicans to become producers and distributors of reggae music in and outside of Jamaica.

Since the musical genre is in itself diasporic, songs made outside of Jamaica, particularly the United Kingdom, reveal a level of despondency between peoples of African and Asian ancestry.  This is most apparent in the songs “Mister Chin” by Yellowman, “Mister Singh” by Pato Banton, and “Indian Chick” by Macka-B.  These songs are characterized by the ill-interactions between Asian shopkeepers and African customers revealing a desire for black owned businesses similar to Ice Cube’s “Black Korea.”  Additionally, the subject of Asian woman is a recurring theme which perpetuates notions of black male sexuality through sexual conquest.

 

“Imagining Cho Chang: Complexities and Contradictions in Race Relations and Asian American Ethnic Identities in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series”

J. K. Rowling’s widely popular Harry Potter series is the story of a Caucasian British boy who is orphaned as a baby when his magical parents are killed by an evil wizard, Voldemort, and brought up in stilted, suffocating environment by Muggles (non-magical folk) until he is whisked off to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at the age of eleven to be with “his own kind” and have magical, courageous, coming-of-age adventures, culminating in his vanquishing of the wizard who killed his parents. Maria Nikolajeva, in her essay “Harry Potter—A Return to the Romantic Hero,” notes that this basic plot, an inherently good, masculine male who grows in maturity until he is able to achieve his ultimate objective, has a long history in children’s literature, from fairy tales to Tom Brown’s Schooldays.

However, the Harry Potter books also tell many other stories, very different from the white, masculine heroic narrative. One of these is the story of the Asian American / Asian British experience as seen through the characters of Cho Chang and Parvati and Padma Patil, replete with messages about ethnic identity, racial justice, gender, and colonialism.  A study of this aspect of the Harry Potter series yields much information about the ways in which Asian American identity is being constructed for today’s children. This paper will briefly chronicle the history of stereotype and Asian America, explore how these ideas play out in Rowling’s treatment of Cho Chang, Harry’s first love interest, compare Cho with the other two characters of Asian descent in the series, Parvati and Padma Patil, examine how the ‘model minority’ myth is alive and well at Hogwarts, analyze Rowling’s commentary on racial superiority in the series, and finally offer advice for teachers to help students understand the complex treatment of race, ethnicity and gender in the Harry Potter books and films.

 

“Unexpected and Overlooked Intersections between Literature and History: Historicizing, Theorizing and Building on Subjectivity and Experience(s) in Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters”

What are the theoretical and methodological intersections between literature and history, particularly within APA studies? How can we make sense of these intersections within APA studies and beyond? And what is “the beyond?” This presentation will address and assess these key questions by looking at Jessica Hagedorn’s novel Dogeaters from a historical and contemporary-based perspective.

First, this presentation will present an overview of previously-published interdisciplinary- and intersectional- based analyses on this literary work, particularly within specific and broad trajectories of diaspora, transnationalism, and postcoloniality. Specifically, I will acknowledge and refer to (con)textual and theoretical analyses authored by such APA studies scholars as Sarita See, Jeffrey Santa Ana, Victor Bascara, and Allan Punzalan Isaac.

Nonetheless, by viewing Hagedorn’s multivalent narrative from a historical- and contemporary- based perspective, this presentation will build on and distinguish from previous studies done on this text by further extrapolating and evaluating four distinct and overlapping points of inquiry: (1) the theoretical and methodological bridge(s) between “fictional” literature and “non-fictional” history; (2) the historical and contemporary condition(s) of what E. San Juan calls the “anti-postcolonial” on local- and global- based sites militarized by the U.S.; (3) the process and transformation of subjectivity and experience(s) based on “the dialectical”; and (4) the unexpected and overlooked manifestation(s) of what Vijay Prashad calls the “polycultural” within the militarized space(s). In turn, this presentation will look at how these four points of inquiry can become realizations of distinction, overlap, and coalition-building within and between Filipino/American-, Asian/Pacific Islander American-, and other race- and ethnic-based studies. 

^

10:30 – 11:50 A.M. (Session Three) Room 102

Reclaiming Our Voices: Media Constructions of Asian America

"Playing the Part: A study of how Asian American women are affected by images of themselves in the media"

Portrayals of Asian American women have been talked about, written on, and discussed in papers, books and the media. Most scholars and students of Asian American studies know that Asian women are either portrayed as being what Jessica Hagadorn describes in "Asian Women in Film: No Joy, No Luck" as “objects of desire or derision.” Yet who is asking these women that are being portrayed about their attitudes and thoughts on these images? There is literature and scholarly work on interpreting and critiquing the portrayal of Asian American women but my research is solely centered on understanding what “the portrayed” really think about these stereotyped roles of themselves in the media.

My research shows a correlation between women that do not experience discrimination for being Asian to their lack in ability to clearly understand the stereotypes that were portrayed in the images and to be affected greatly by these images. According to William M. O’Barr, in "Culture and the Ad," the meaning of advertisements is a collaborative effort on the part of the maker and the audience. Because these women do not see the problematic portrayal of Asian American women in these images, these images do not hold any power over them. However for the women who have had experiences not only in discrimination but also an educated understanding of the scholarly works of Asian American studies, the images affect them deeply. There is either a sense of hopelessness or anger. It is either “I see these images everywhere but I can’t do anything about it” or “I hate them!” These images hold power over these women because it gets such a strong reaction from them. In getting these reactions, these images have done their job by making an impact which is what the media wants to do. In the end, meaning is in the eye of the beholder.

 

“Location, Location, Location: Where and What is Asian American Art?”

Although the Guerilla Girls’ movement has brought attention to the underrepresentation of women artists within traditional museums, there is only a token amount of attention on artists of diverse racial background, specifically Asian Americans. Looking to feminist critiques of the art establishment, specifically the works of the Guerilla Girls, I am inspired to research Asian American artists and their presence in the art world. This paper examines the place of Asian American Art in the United States, where it is located, produced and exhibited. Using data from the US census about the occupations and locations of Asian Americans, as well as data from art institutions and exhibitions that feature Asian Americans, I plan to geographically compare these institutions and identify key trends in the location of Asian American art. Along with this original research, this paper contributes to the ongoing discussion about what is Asian American art. This project will draw on my own oral histories conducted about Asian American art with scholars, academics and critics. In addition, this project will also include oral histories from Asian American artists themselves who would like to share their ideas and perspectives. Using empirical data, personal narratives, and concentrating on the art itself, this paper will work to locate the place of Asian American Art throughout the United States.

 

“The Racialization of Senator Barack Obama in Print and Radio Media Coverage”

The mainstream media has a powerful lens in framing the identity of a “true America” and its people.  The Midwestern media has continued to perpetuate this homogenous “Heartland of America.”  Although assimilated, the “other” Asian-American stereotype is still embedded in our political and media systems. 

The late Edward Said, critic of the socially-constructed ideology, “Orientalism,” believes the mainstream media continues to evoke this Orientalist stereotype when portraying people of the “East.”  Said describes Orientalism “as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Said 3).   The Midwestern media uses cultural imperialism to restructure the identity of people from the “East,” which is the basis of my research.

Identities can be negotiated to attain political empowerment for many racially and culturally Asian Americans. In my research, I will analyze how Hawai’i-native and Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s own cultural and racial identity is framed and ultimately racialized through print and radio media. My method consists of a quantitative media content analysis, studying Hawaiian and Michigan radio transcripts and newspaper articles (Michigan & Hawai’i Public Radio, Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, Honolulu Advertiser, and Honolulu Star Bulletin).

The analysis will involve each network’s coverage/framing of Obama’s racial and cultural background, how Obama reacts to the racialized questions, and whether Obama’s racial or cultural identity will evolve over the 2008 election period. I expect the media’s portrayal of this biracial and multicultural political representative will continue to racialize him as “Black,” thus perpetuating the Asian invisibility and ignoring Asian-Pacific-Islander cultural upbringing.

^

12:30 – 1:30 P.M. (Lunch) Kellogg Center, Red Cedar Room

“Everyday People—Looking Across Race, Dreaming Beyond Race”

^

2:00 – 3:20 P.M. (Session Four) Heritage Room

Round-table session on the intersections of “PostColonial Studies” and “APA Studies”

^

2:00 – 3:20 P.M. (Session Five) Willy Room

ILL-Literacy workshop

"WHOSE WORD?"

The iLL-Literacy spoken word collective and participants explore the use of English as a language we were never meant to own, but do regardless. What words do we have the rights to? Who's allowed to say what? And in the long run, what impact will our words have on our generation?

^

2:00 – 3:20 P.M. (Session Six) Room 102

Asian-Latino Border Crossings: Mistaken Identities

“South Asian American Identity In Relation”

The need for South Asian Americans to re-conceive our relations to other peoples of color is particularly salient as the boundary between “model minority” and “national security threat” continues to attenuate. We are at a time when South Asian peoples must take seriously what it means to fall prey to cases of “mistaken identity” – whether it be for an Arab terrorist or a Mexican (also an invariably undocumented menace). In this essay, I explore processes of horizontal cross-racial identification between Asian Americans and Latino peoples. I motivate this exploration by connecting the need for horizontal cross-racial identification to the need (well-articulated by Women of Color feminists), to re-fashion intra-communal non-dominant cultural understandings of tradition that promote gender violence and heterosexist imperatives. In this task I engage the work of critical race theorists Ian Haney Lopez, Robert Chang and Kimberlé Crenshaw, focusing particularly on their investigations of the socially fragmenting logic of white supremacy and its impact on resistant identity formations amongst people of color.

I also engage critical race theory methodologically, navigating personal experiences within South Asian American community, politicized South Asian activist circles and Women of Color coalition for what they expose about the necessities, obstacles and potential avenues toward building resistant cultural identities that emphasize relations across the institutionalized borders of racially-pure categories (i.e., African-American, Mexican-American, Chinese-American, and so on). Speaking from the position of a South Asian American who identifies politically as a Woman of Color, I take up the work of María Lugones, Anannya Bhattacharjee, Andrea Smith and other feminists of color to consider how this horizontal cross-racial identification amongst non-white peoples can enable or support cultural transformations against intra-communal gender violence.

 

“Identity crisis? Documentation and Registration in Chinese, Mexican, and European Immigrant Communities, 1905-1930”

In the late 1920s, after the passage of racially restrictive quotas, restrictionists began pursuing new policies of photographic immigrant identity documentation, immigrant registration, and naturalization documentation. In 1928, as the Immigration Bureau implemented a new policy of issuing photographic identity cards to all arriving immigrants, the Commissioner of Immigration made clear that it was based on the precedent of Chinese identity documents and Mexican border-crossing cards. However, these policies also spurred opposition among European immigrants and their advocates, as they had done previously within Chinese and Mexican communities.

This paper explores the logics and practices of the Immigration Bureau’s efforts to expand immigrant identification. As the physical representation of the state’s efforts to clarify the legal and national identity of the residents within its borders, immigration and naturalization documentation may seem particularly resistant to a transnational study of immigration. However, these documents were part of the increasingly transnational implementation of immigration restrictions throughout the early twentieth century. At the same time, this paper considers the extensive opposition to the expansion of identity documentation. Starting with the transnational Chinese boycott of US goods in 1905, continuing through Mexican challenges to documentation on both sides of the border, and concluding with European immigrant protests that drew on the rhetoric of Chinese and Mexican opposition, this paper expands both comparative and transnational approaches to immigration history.

Building on recent work by immigration historians such as Mae Ngai and Libby Garland, this research shows that the implementation of racial quotas was not only an endpoint in the history of immigration regulation, but also as a beginning.

Although this paper is primarily historical, it is also hoped that it will provide a starting point for audience discussion about the immigrant registration and documentation practices that have been expanded again in the past 10 years.

*Open

^

3:30 – 4:50 P.M. (Session Seven) Heritage Room

Yellow Power: Historiography, Discourse, and National Identity

“‘He Stands Between Black and White’: Japanese Fulbrighters Navigate the Color Line, 1949-1964”

Between 1949 and 1951, more than 350 Japanese and Okinawans studied in the United States as grantees of the Government Aid and Relief in Occupied Areas (GARIOA), an initiative of the Allied postwar occupation of Japan that later became the U.S-Japan Fulbright Program. In this presentation, I analyze the Japanese students’ interactions with U.S. racial minorities, in particular Japanese Americans and Japanese war brides, to argue that the students’ effectiveness as cultural ambassadors depended on the critical assistance they received from these varied communities. Most Americans viewed the Japanese sojourners as racially situated somewhere “between black and white.” The students, however, reworked that binary model of U.S. race relations to resituate themselves in a global context by expanding their notion of “Japaneseness” to include members of the broader Japanese diaspora and former Japanese colonial subjects such as Koreans and Chinese. The Fulbright Program provided rare occasions for Japanese students to creatively deploy their racialized identity, as both Japanese and Asian, in ways that challenged nation-centered narratives of both U.S. race relations and U.S.-Japan relations.

 

“De-Coding the Oriental/Negro Problem: The Deception of Liberatory Discourse in 20th Century U.S. Reform Movements”

By utilizing Donaldo Macedo’s and Lilia Bartolome’s concept of “ideologically coded language," which argues that certain words “not only dehumanize other cultural beings but also serve to justify the violence perpetuated against subordinate groups,” I examine the illusion of liberatory discourse within 20th Century U.S. Reform Movements. Discourse centering on “reform” and “progression” or “assimilation” in lieu of an American “melting pot” masks the violence directed toward Americans of color who have historically been excluded and racialized as “problems” and “questions.” In particular, I locate the intersection between Black Americans and Asian Americans who were codified as both the “Negro Problem” and the “Oriental Problem.” In this paper, my aim is to interrogate the ironies and consequences of discourse amid a historic moment within American history viewed for the promotion toward positive change in unifying the nation. Similarly, I examine the ways both Black Americans and Asian Americans have historically resisted the discourse delineating them as non-Americans.

 

* Reme Grefalda, Librarian from The Library of Congress (APA Collection) and Diana Rivera, Ethnic Studies Librarian (MSU)

"A Nationwide Harvest of Our Collective Experience"

Visionary thinking marks this daunting initiative by the Library of Congress to pursue the goal to provide a coordinated and centralized source and access to Asian Pacific American collections nationwide. A Research Guide to Asian Pacific American Resources in the Library of Congress was compiled and the result of this effort is a searchable bibliography of over 3,300 titles, identifiable by author, title, LC card number, imprint or publication version and subject heading. The Library’s end goal is to explore the possibilities of global accessibility of APA resources from various existing collections coordinated by one source to benefit tomorrow’s researchers and scholars.

Presenter: Remé Grefalda, Librarian
The Asian Pacific American Collection at the Library of Congress

^

3:30 – 4:50 P.M. (Session Eight) Willy Room 

APASO (Asian Pacific American Student Organization), OISS (Office for International Students and Scholars), and the ISA (International Student Association)

“Intersections between Asian American and Asian International Students - What they don't tell you in the Movies!”

"The intersection between Asian Americans with Asian International
Students - a roundtable discussion" is sponsored by the Asian Pacific
American Student Organization (APASO) in which an interactive discussion
will focus on the intersectionality of Asian Americans and international
students from Asia.  The format of the session will be a fishbowl
discussion in which the participants are asked a series of compelling
questions and asked to give their varying views, including recuperating
histories of APA coalition building with other communities, the
so-called "Model Minority" label and other important issues.

Round-table session

^

3:30 – 4:50 P.M. (Session Nine) Room 102

APA Cultural Intersections: Metaphors, Medicine, and Money

“Intersectionality: Statistical Analysis and Narrative Processes”

The concept of an intersection in the social sciences is borrowed from the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) in statistics. An ANOVA proceeds from the assumption that there are measurable predictor variables that can account for the variance among a criterion variable. The amount of variance among a criterion measure that a predictor variable can account for is referred to as a “main effect.” The amount of variance that two or more predictor variables account for together is referred to as an “interaction effect.” The shortcoming of the statistics analogy of interactionality is the difficulty in articulating “higher order” interactions or when three or more variables reliably predict a criterion.  This statistical language for intersections proceeds from a root metaphor that “the world is a machine” or “mechanism.”

An alternative metaphor of intersectionality for proceeds from a “contextualist” root metaphor.The metaphor that the “world is a text” utilizes narratives to understand human experience and behavior. Intersections are not abstract relationships between abstract variables but an expected and anticipated dimension of a narrative plot. This paper will argue that a theoretical framework for intersectionality in APA studies that proceeds from both a mechanistic and contextualist root metaphor is better prepared for research or prediction, and understanding or application. Intersections can be described as statistical relationships between measured variables. And, intersections can be described within stories that contain concrete characters that interact with intentionality and purpose. APA studies is born out of the American narratives of how individuals who identify or are identified as “Asian Pacific Americans” contribute/d to American culture and how they negotiate/d their lives and ethnic practices in a racialized society. The telling of our stories is equally important as analyzing our experience into measured variables. Intersectionality does not have to be the only metaphor for demonstrating how the APA experience is intertwined with every other discourse community.

 

“Loss of Face, Social Anxiety, and Depression among Asian American and European American college students”

This study examines the cultural factors that play a role in depression for Asian Americans. Specifically, we will examine the culturally salient constructs of loss of face, acculturation, and family relationship in relation to depression. We will also test previous findings of perfectionism and social anxiety’s relationship to depression in the general population and cultural specific population (Asian Americans). Previously it was noted that loss of face was associated with social anxiety but not depression. We hypothesize that loss of face will be highly correlated with social anxiety similar to previous studies and social anxiety will highly correlate with depression as well. Therefore, there is an indirect connection of loss of face and depression for Asian Americans mediated by the level of social anxiety. We also hypothesize that Asian Americans will have a higher rate of social anxiety and depression as a whole confirming other studies. Perfectionism personality trait should be about the same for European Americans and Asian Americans. We also predict that there will be gender differences for depression as well. Results will contribute to the understanding of cultural factors that affect depression for Asian Americans as well as confirmation of general variables associated with depression.

 

“Medical Students attitudes towards traditional Asian Medicine”

The major differences between Eastern and Western approaches to medicine involve traditional versus scientific methods, spiritual versus practical solutions, purifying versus fighting techniques, and natural versus synthetic cures. My study will provide background on the traditional and modern practices of Yoga, Ayurveda and Acupuncture. The study will be based on interviews including structured questionnaires to be administered to Michigan State University’s (MSU) medical students.

 I propose to study whether Asian and non-Asian American students differ in their acceptance and application of the Eastern philosophy reflected in the practice of yoga Ayurveda and acupuncture. My hypothesis is that Asian-American medical students will be less enthusiastic about their traditional ethnic medicines than their non-Asian counterparts will be. I postulate that students of Asian descent will regard Eastern medicines from a historic perspective, and recognize a direct correlation between extended life expectancy and the introduction of Western medical practices in their ancestral lands. On the other hand, non-Asian medical students may take a more open-minded approach. They may view the continuation of ancient practices as some indication of scientific validity in itself. They may also be attracted to Eastern approaches in contrast to the empirical practices of the West. These findings will help me formulate a theory, which will help me explain why people of different ethnicities perceive Asian medicine differently. Consequently, I can also explain the consequences of these cultural presumptions in the field of medicine and how it affects all patients.

 

“Invisible: Crouching Stars, Hidden Talent”

To get the top of the business world, an employee has to be a star. Stars are categorized as “A” players and are quickly promoted, praised and given choice assignments. What about Asian Pacific Americans?  APA employees are “invisible people.” “Invisible people” do not get ahead because they are either “demographic invisibles,” “stylistic invisibles” or sometimes both. This is often the case for APA professionals in today's hypercompetitive business world, running into the “Bamboo Ceiling.” “Demographic invisibles” are stunted by their gender, ethnicity, nationality and age. “Stylistic Invisibles” are professionals that do not match the conventional, standard representation of a leader or an “A” player. APAs have often been stereotyped as the "Model Minority," someone who works hard, is less ambitious, lacks charisma and is excellent at following orders but not giving orders. They are seen as “B” players, players that are often overlooked for promotions, recognition and mentorship.

This study hypothesizes that Asian Pacific American professionals are not reaching the top of the corporate ladder as “A” players because of “stylistic invisibility” and “demographic invisibility.” This study tests the natural leadership qualities of APAs by comparing Hofstede’s cultural dimensions with Maxwell’s 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader. We then study how APAs are affected by “demographic invisibility.” We examine corporate management and if they are providing the social networks, fast-track training and choice assignments that prepare APAs for executive positions and globalization. This study hypothesizes that APAs are not being properly prepared and hired as potential leaders but instead are hired to fulfill quotas and to act as props for the current diversity management trend.

^

5:00 P.M. Conference Ends