Historicizing Chinese Diasporas’ Transnational Civic Engagement with and Resistance against the U.S. Empire

• In Event: Scholars of Color Imagining Educational Research as Reparation for U.S. Imperialism

Abstract

Chinese Diasporas have a long and complicated relationship regarding their civic engagement throughout U.S. history. At the beginning of their journey in the late 19th century, they were exploited as cheap coolies, demonized as yellow perils threatening White male financial supremacy, and denied citizenship rights as legitimate contributors to U.S. society (Takaki, 1998). Even when they became eligible to become U.S. citizens in the 1940s, they were often surveilled as suspicious communists, lauded as model minorities against other communities of Color, and racialized as perpetual foreigners entrenched between U.S.-China geopolitics (Yung et al., 2006). Existing research has uncovered Chinese Diasporas’ transnational civic engagement with and resistance against the U.S. empire (Lai, 2010; Wang, 2007). However, little is known about their civic engagement in the educational arena. Specifically, educational research seldom examines how Chinese Diasporas have advanced U.S. ideals of democracy and equality while perpetuating U.S. imperial hegemony through a historical, transnational lens.

Building on the frameworks of AsianCrit (Iftikar & Museus, 2018), empire (Coloma, 2013), and civic engagement (Wong et al., 2011), this conceptual paper analyzes interdisciplinary research to delineate five historical periods of Chinese Diasporas’ transnational civic engagement with the U.S. empire in the educational arena. They are yellow perils entangled with settler colonialism (1785–1930), middle people caught in the racial binary (1850–1941), model minorities fought in the “Good War” (1937–1945), suspicious communists surveilled during the Cold War (1945–1991), and perpetual foreigners entrenched in geopolitical conflicts (1991–Present). In articulating these five historical periods, the authors contribute a significant critique of U.S. educational research that often perpetuates academic imperialism by silencing Chinese Diasporas’ counterstories, distorting the history of their civic engagement, or solely positioning them as victims of the U.S. empire. In presenting a historically accurate and nuanced portrayal of the Chinese Diasporas, the authors dare to humanize this group of people amidst growing Sinophobia within the U.S. empire and imagine anti-imperialist research for the Chinese Diasporas in a transnational world (Guo, 2021).

Authors

• Lin Wu, Western Oregon University

• Min Yu, Wayne State University

• Wenyu Guo, University of South Florida

• Yuechen Sun, University of South Carolina

• Ming Fang He, Georgia Southern University