I wanted to begin with something a little bit more light-hearted: I was looking at wikipedia with a couple friends the other day, and decided to see what they had to say about the "v-sign" or "peace sign" that our class talked about with regard to photo-taking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-sign#Japan_and_the_V_sign
This is their account of the practice, although I'm skeptical. It seems like this is a case of willingness to presume some kind of Japanese cultural hegemony instead of looking for other explanations that may apply to Korea or Taiwan. Any sort of trans-national dimension (use among Asian Americans) is also not present in the article. If anyone has more information, I would encourage you to do a little user-editing and improve on the 1972 figure skating explanation.

On a more serious note, I wanted to say some things to dovetail with Min's remarks about "On the Upside-downness..." That Meghan initially struck up a conversation with the narrator only because she was Indian (and not because she noticed that they were both lesbians) is similar in character to Meghan and Virginia's empathetic sigh when the brown women were forced to leave the prayer meeting early to help serve food. In the former case, the narrator appears only as a racialized subject, to the exclusion of other aspects of her identity. In the latter, the white women see one kind of oppression (the "sexism" they deplore) when there are certainly other power dynamics (racism, colonialism) in play. I think this is a very common way of viewing privilege: people are much more willing to think critically and equivocate on axes of identity along which they have less power and ignore their own privilege along others.

I think Yamamoto writes about this as well in "A Fire in Fontana." The story focuses on the narrator's experiences with race working at a Black newspaper in Los Angeles during the post-war period (the two athletes mentioned on p 151 were two of the first Black NFL players, attending UCLA in the 1930s), particularly the narrator's difficulty finding her "place" within the discourse at that time (as in the case of the "white" and "colored" bathrooms). However, the story also speaks more subtly about gender. Just as the narrative of her speaking out against racial discrimination seems to be reaching a peak when she challenges the biases even of those on whose courtesy she depends (p 156), the story tails off. We next find her "Married and set about producing a passel of children" (156), "putting another load of clothes into the automatic washer, ironing, maybe whipping up some tacos for supper" (157). Unlike earlier situations in which the narrator's silence seems to be a decision made based on hesitancy (which Rachel mentions in her post), her view of the Watts riots is on a television screen in a segregated neighborhood, and her silence now is imposed by her domestic situation. The way in which this shift from politicized youth to inwardly-exulting domestic housewife is framed as inevitable offers a commentary on the ways in which the narrator's position on racism was circumscribed by her gender--if not by the ways in which people treated her in particular interactions, then by the confining space in which she resides as a mother and homemaker.