Multiplexing the Racial and Ethnic Planes: New Chinese American Politics in Global Asian Suburbs

Abstract

This paper elaborates on the multiple racial and ethnic planes that form the complex environment that is unique to global Chinese suburbs and the nuanced political strategies that Chinese American candidates must pursue through the process referred to as multiplexing. Chinese American candidates must negotiate the racial formations that cast and conflate them and other Asian candidates as “permanent aliens” or “perpetual foreigners” whose interests are seen as suspect and as a threat to the group interests by those Caucasian residents who oppose the demographic shifts and political changes taking shape in these global suburbs. To illustrate the prospects and challenges of new Chinese American politics, this paper draws primarily from the two suburbs of Cupertino, California and Sugar Land, Texas, which are both witnessing dramatic demographic and political shifts among their respectively large Chinese immigrant populations during the last decade. Both cities are emblematic of the complex environments that envelop contemporary global Chinese suburbs and provide cautionary tales on the importance of multiplexing as a necessary political strategy for electoral success.