Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World

A book talk by Claire Jean Kim, Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies at UC-Irvine: This book is a sweeping historical examination of how Asian Americans have been positioned relative to white people and Black people in the US racial order, from the mid-19th century to the present. Asian American studies scholarship conventionally focuses on white supremacy, or what white due to hold down Asian-Americans and other non-white groups. This book asks what happens if we bring structural anti-blackness – or the organization of collective life around the phobic avoidance of blackness – back into the picture from which it has been redacted. What happens if we rethink Asian American history in relation to anti-Blackness?