Global Anti-Asian Racism
Association for Asian Studies
Global Anti-Asian Racism
Association for Asian Studies
Global anti-Asian racism, particularly in the guise of Yellow Peril, has endured for centuries around the world. In Europe and the Americas, Asian immigrants and refugees were, and are, treated as threats to national security. Yellow Peril and anti-Asian racism is also found in Africa, Australia, and in Asian nations as well. Wherever Asian immigrants and refugees found themselves, anti-Asian sentiments quickly followed. The contributors to Global Anti-Asian Racism investigate the varied manifestations of prejudice and violence that Asians have endured through the 17th century to the twin pandemics of anti-Asian racism during COVID-19. From historical case studies in Mexico and Brazil to personal ruminations of people who are Asian German, mixed-race Swedish-Japanese, and adopted Korean American, to graphic narratives and poetic explorations, the essays in this volume illuminate the multifaceted nature of global anti-Asian racism and the resilience of Asians across the world to resist and counter this bigotry and bias.
This transformational volume on global anti-Asian racism should be required reading for all those interested in why we ought to foster conversations between Asian area studies and Asian diaspora studies and how we might create common ground for anti-racist solidarity. In approaching anti-Asian racism as a global phenomenon, contributors highlight a wide range of critical sites—foreign policy, cultural production, social justice activism, economics, transracial adoption, inter-Asian persecution, alphabetic supremacy, and quotidian life—where discrimination and bias manifest. They also collectively demonstrate how necessary it is to imagine our praxis capaciously if we want academic scholarship to impact the age-old fears that anti-Asian racism foments and reflects. This superbly edited collection teaches us that the complexity of global anti-Asian racism requires communal effort—to cross-pollinate knowledge, to create effective responses, and to explore vulnerability as the site of both oppression and solidarity. Tina Chen, Founding Editor of Verge: Studies in Global Asias and Director of the Global Asias Initiative at the Pennsylvania State University
Asian American Studies scholars should be thankful that we now have a multi-genre collection that situates anti-Asian racism in a global context. In highly readable prose, Global Anti-Asian Racism offers a breadth to this topic that in turn adds to our theoretical depth around the relationship of racism to colonialism, trauma, capitalism, and most importantly, resistance. This book is highly recommended for anyone wanting a robust understanding of both the threats of intersectional violence across the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe and how we can fight back. Pawan Dhingra, Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty, Amherst College and President, Association for Asian American Studies
Jennifer Ho’s edited volume on Global Anti-Asian Racism is a thundering response to the clarion call for greater attention to race and racism in Asian Studies. Through powerful anecdote, heartbreaking evidence of fatal racism, and supported with structural analysis, this Asia Shorts volume is necessary reading that does away, once and for all, with the notion that Asian-descended people are invisible, irrelevant, and apolitical. This is a must-teach volume, illustrating the power of a global and antiracist approach to inequality. Nitasha Tamar Sharma, Professor of African American Studies and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University
Foreword: Tackling the Taboo Subject — Christine R. Yano
Introduction: Global Anti-Asian Racism: The Problem that Never Went Away — Jennifer Ho
1. Yellow Peril, Brown Terror: The Global Virus of Anti-Asian Racism across Closed Borders — Rahul K. Gairola
2. Don’t Hate the Player. Between Essentialism and Resistance: Community Organizing against Anti-Asian Racism in Germany — Sara Djahim
3. The Choice of Liberdade: Brazilian Facets of Anti-Asian Racism and the Activism’s Response — Érika Tiemi W. Fujii, Gabriel Akira, Maria Victória R. Ruy, and Mariana Mitiko Nomura
4. The Political Economy of Anti-Asian Discrimination in Africa — Richard Aidoo
5. Savage Script: How Chinese Writing Became Barbaric — Rivi Handler-Spitz
6. Racialization from Home: China’s Response to the Anti-Chinese Movement in Mexico, 1928–1937 — Xuening Kong
7. The Politics of Anti-Asian Discourses in Turkey — Irmak Yazici
8. The Anti-Asian Racism at Home: Reckoning with the Experiences of Adoptees from Asia — Kimberly D. McKee
9. Far-Flung Fetishization: Calling Asian Women to Globally Transcend Hypersexualization — Eileen Chung
10. Translating Guling: Technologies of Language, Race, and Resistance in Sweden — Jennifer Hayashida
Introduction: Global Anti-Asian Racism: The Problem that Never Went Away — Jennifer Ho
1. Yellow Peril, Brown Terror: The Global Virus of Anti-Asian Racism across Closed Borders — Rahul K. Gairola
2. Don’t Hate the Player. Between Essentialism and Resistance: Community Organizing against Anti-Asian Racism in Germany — Sara Djahim
3. The Choice of Liberdade: Brazilian Facets of Anti-Asian Racism and the Activism’s Response — Érika Tiemi W. Fujii, Gabriel Akira, Maria Victória R. Ruy, and Mariana Mitiko Nomura
4. The Political Economy of Anti-Asian Discrimination in Africa — Richard Aidoo
5. Savage Script: How Chinese Writing Became Barbaric — Rivi Handler-Spitz
6. Racialization from Home: China’s Response to the Anti-Chinese Movement in Mexico, 1928–1937 — Xuening Kong
7. The Politics of Anti-Asian Discourses in Turkey — Irmak Yazici
8. The Anti-Asian Racism at Home: Reckoning with the Experiences of Adoptees from Asia — Kimberly D. McKee
9. Far-Flung Fetishization: Calling Asian Women to Globally Transcend Hypersexualization — Eileen Chung
10. Translating Guling: Technologies of Language, Race, and Resistance in Sweden — Jennifer Hayashida