Fear or Control

In "Arabs, Islam, and the Dogmas of the West" by Edward Said, the author discusses the four dogmas surrounding the "Orient". The final dogma that he mentions is in regards to how history of Asian Americans is spoken about, the story line usually being of an evil to be feared, or a mass oppressed society. These categories force future generations of Americans to have very restricted views of their heritage, stories of revolution and strength subsequently erased from later retellings. That is a key reason as to why people today are usually unable to main many activists and radical figures that are of Asian descent, the history that is told to modern students is restrained to either the tales of oppression or of abuse. It seems incapable of Western societies to complicate the narratives that they have forced onto people of color, being unable to depict them as populations with three dimensional backgrounds, white people being the only one allowed that privilege.