The Supreme Court, however, declared that although he was Caucasian, he did not fit the popular conception of who was white. The Thind case shows that race is a social construction, formed from American ideologies of ethnicity and class. For this reason, Lee focuses on the representations of Asians in American popular culture. Popular culture here does not mean dominance by an elite oligarchy or common folk. Instead, he sees it as a continuous process of negotiation for hegemony between the two segments.
Popular culture is thus a contested terrain, malleable and changing.
The vehicles for disseminating images of Asians in popular culture are many. They include songs, minstrel performances, museum exhibits, pulp fiction, Hollywood musicals, dramas, and movies. Over time, several stereotypes came to be associated with Asian Americans. They did not occur spontaneously or sui generis . Instead, they were constructed at particular historical moments marked by economic changes and cultural crises.