Claire Jean Kim, "Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

Oct 30, 2023

Dr. Claire Jean Kim explores the relationship between anti-Asian racism and structural anti-Blackness. The guest discusses the field of studying Asian Americans and race, emphasizing the importance of understanding the interconnectedness of discrimination. The chapter also explores the landmark Supreme Court decision in 1927 that ruled against a Chinese American schoolgirl's right to attend a white school. Examining the treatment of Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, highlighting the erasure of Supreme Court cases and the distinction made between the two groups. The chapter explores the concept of solidarity and the failure of the Asian American critique of white supremacy to address anti-black persecution.

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Introduction

00:00 • 3min

Studying Asian Americans and the Interconnectedness of Discrimination

02:34 • 9min

Translating Cartoon Images into Words

11:32 • 19min

The Ganglam Case and the Distancing of the Chinese Community

30:10 • 5min

Chinese and Japanese Immigrants in the United States

35:00 • 10min

Addressing Anti-Blackness and Building Solidarity

45:12 • 17min

Reflections on 'Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World'

01:02:08 • 2min

Where do Asian Americans fit into the U.S. racial order? How do we understand anti-Asian racism in relation to structural anti-Blackness? Are Asian Americans subordinated comparably to Black people or permitted adjacency to whiteness? For Dr. Claire Jean Kim, the police murder of George Floyd and the surge in anti-Asian hate during the COVID-19 pandemic make these questions urgent – and the answers may alter the US racial order.

In Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World (Cambridge UP, 2023), Dr. Kim argues that understanding US racial dynamics requires careful analysis of two forces: anti-Blackness and white supremacy. Dr. Kim’s meticulously researched book treats White supremacy and anti-Blackness as “kinetic forces or energy flows that have shaped and been shaped by the structural regimes of slavery, colonialism, capitalism, settler colonialism, and empire across the globe.” White supremacy lifts up one group as it pushes down all others. Anti-Blackness “abjects Blackness and elevates not-Blackness.” Based on her detailed analysis of law, history, and politics, Dr. Kim demonstrates how Asian Americans are “dynamically constituted as not-white, but above all not-Black” – and that Not-Blackness is a “vital form of property in an anti-Black world.” The construction of Asian Americans as not-white but above all not-Black has determined their positionality for nearly two centuries. Asian Americans are “dynamically positioned and weaponized by the U.S. state as it seeks to preserve structural anti-Blackness.” How Asian Americans choose to respond to their not-Black status will help to define racial politics in the U.S. in the twenty-first century. Can “Asian Americanness be reimagined as a force that destabilizes, rather than stabilizes, an anti-Black world?

Dr. Claire Jean Kim is Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies at University of California, Irvine, where she teaches classes on race, politics, and human-animal studies. She is the author of two previous award-winning books, Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City (Yale University Press, 2000) and Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Susan Liebell is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

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