"Junior Partners"
Asian Americans and an Anti-Black World
“If we are to be honest with ourselves, we must admit that the ‘Negro’ has been inviting whites, as well as civil society's junior partners, to the dance of social death for hundreds of years, but few have wanted to learn the steps.
They have been, and remain today - even in the most anti-racist movements, like the prison abolition movement - invested elsewhere.
This is not to say that all oppositional political desire today is pro-white, but it is usually anti-Black, meaning it will not dance with death.”
- Dr. Frank Wilderson III
Acknowledgements
Working Groundrules
Distancing from Blackness:
Mississippi Chinese
Distancing from Blackness: Mississippi Chinese
“I argue that the rule of racial politics in Gong Lum should be understood as the Asian American plaintiffs’ desire that racial difference be understood not as white/non-white, but as black/non-black.
[...] The Gong Lum plaintiffs’ anti-black argument and rationale for gaining entry to white-only schools seems clear on this score. If we were to summarize the Gong Lum plaintiffs’ Asian American position here, it would be that ’we demand entry into white social institutions because we are not black.’
More to the point, ’we demand such entry because we, just the same as whites, have a right to equal protection from the dangers posed by contact with or proximity to blackness.’” - Sora Han
Distancing from Blackness: Citizenship Claims
Why did Asian Americans refuse to seek citizenship and rights through alignment with Blackness?
“Model Minority”, 1860’s to the present
“Model Minority”, 1860’s to the present
“It doesn’t matter anymore what shade the newcomer’s skin is.
A hostile posture toward resident blacks must be struck at the Americanizing door before it will open.
The public is asked to accept American blacks as the common denominator in each conflict between an immigrant and a job or between a wannabe and status.
It hardly matters what complexities, contexts and misinformation accompany these conflicts.
They can all be subsumed as the equation of brand X vs. blacks.”
- Toni Morrison
“Model Minority”, 1860’s to the present
Diligence Discipline Respect Authority Morality Self-Sufficiency Values Education Family Values Thriftiness | Laziness No Discipline Criminal Deviance Dependency Drop Outs Weak Family Values Doesn’t deter gratification |
“Model Minority” (Asian) | “Urban Underclass” (Black) |
1987
1989
“Model Minority”, 1860’s to the present
What does “Model Minority” enable?
Politics of “Solidarity”
“To situate Korean American merchants as ‘victims’ of the black poor, innocent and ignorant of a struggle that simply precedes them, [...], that is not of their making, that is beyond their comprehension, and, hence, ‘not their fault’ is, quite plainly, to circumvent ethics and to excise a population from time and space and the power relations they unavoidably inhabit. [...]
The explicit impetus of the literature surveyed in this article is the promotion of multiracial coalition politics in the urban USA. Much like Ture and Hamilton, I am far from foreclosing the question of coalition, but my concern nevertheless has been to suspend this question while working to understand how the desire for coalition is rhetorically structured.”
- Jared Sexton in “Proprieties of Coalition: Blacks, Asians, and the Politics of Policing
Politics of “Solidarity”
“Back to that hashtag [#BlackPowerYellowPeril] : Asian (and Asian American) commentary that sought to police our black voices, and how -we- understood and wanted to talk about antiblackness in their community [...] If we can’t have a conversation about how ‘people of color’ can develop their own sense of antiblackness independent of a system of white supremacy–prior to it, [...]
and if we can’t stop pretending there’s some bigger enemy to deal with that supersedes the need to talk about how insidious and fucked up people of color’s antiblackness is in relation to, not subtended by, the antiblackness of white supremacy, then we need not open our mouths, let alone twist our tongues to speak “coalition” or “allies” or “solidarity” or to embody any of those things in words so casual as “or.””
- John Murillo III in “Three Notes on Solidarity; or, In Want of a Requiem”
BlackLivesMatter -
Asian Americans have rejected this in the past, what will “we” choose now?
“And if we can start to see the policing and the mutilation and the aggressivity towards Blackness not as a form of discrimination, but as being a form of psychic health and well-being for the rest of the world, then we can begin to reformulate the problem and begin to take a much more iconoclastic response to it.”
- Dr. Frank Wilderson III
How have you seen Anti-Blackness manifest?
What are your reflections on those times?
What could you have done?
What can you do? What are potential pitfalls?
At school/work
In your community
In your family
In yourself
In the 2016 election
Quote References
“If we are to be honest with ourselves...”
- Dr. Frank Wilderson III
The Prison Slave as Hegemony’s (Silent) Scandal
http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/archive/92_30_2/92_04Wilderson.pdf
“I argue that the rule of racial politics in Gong Lum...”
- Sora Han
The Politics of Race in Asian American Jurisprudence
“It doesn’t matter anymore...”
- Toni Morrison
On the Backs of Blacks
http://collectiveliberation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Morrison-On-the-Backs-of-Blacks.pdf
“To situate Korean American merchants as ‘victims’ ...”
- Jared Sexton
Proprieties of Coalition: Blacks, Asians, and the Politics of Policing http://www.scribd.com/doc/64339484/Sexton-proprieties-of-Coalition
“Back to that hashtag: Asian (and Asian American) commentary...”
- John Murillo III
Three Notes on Solidarity; or, In Want of a Requiem http://outofnowhereblog.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/three-notes-on-solidarity-or-in-want-of-an-requiem/
“And if we can start to see the policing and the mutilation...”
- Dr. Frank Wilderson III
“We’re trying to destroy the world” Anti-Blackness & Police Violence After Ferguson