<正>"Asian American" is a term coined by the late historian and activist Yuji Ichioka as a politically charged group identity in the ethnic consciousness movements of the late 1960s.As all group categories are socially constructed,this self-proclaimed identity emerged to reject the imposed "Oriental" label."Asian American" has now become an umbrella category that includes U.S. citizens and immigrants,who or whose ancestors came from the part of Asia stretching from Pakistan eastward,and has been widely applied in the public arena.However,most Asian Americans have identified themselves with it only conditionally,reflecting the nuance of this pan-racial identity as a process of being American while maintaining an ethnicity of some sort. Similarly,"white" is a rather arbitrary label having less to do with biology and more to do with privilege.In the United States,groups with status and wealth generally earn "white" membership, as the Irish and Jews have done.It is hardly surprising,then,that nonwhites would seek to pass as "white," or aspire to becoming "white," a mark of their attaining middle-class status.However, becoming white can mean distancing oneself from "people of color" or "selling out" one’s ethnicity.Pan-racial identities—Asian American,African American,Hispanic American—are a way the politically vocal in any group try to guard against defections;such new identities may affect individuals’ aspirations for upward social mobility.