Problematizing Racialization Within Identity Capitalism: Chinese American Weaponization of Identity Against "Equity" Policies

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: The Theoretical Power of Identity Capitalism to Exam Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education

Abstract

Is “equity” a code word for “anti-Asian discrimination,” as an immigrant Chinese American man and his sign claimed outside of a town hall on education equity in New York City featuring Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in March 2019? Historically, primary opponents to campaigns and efforts for intersectional racial equity in education have been white organizations and individuals seeking to maintain structures of racial inequality (Park & Liu, 2014). Since 2013, some Chinese Americans and Chinese American-led organizations have weaponized their status as racial minorities to effectively stymie proposed education policy changes for education equity in K-20, although Asian Americans more broadly support affirmative action (Ramakrishnan, 2014). For example, some Chinese Americans have played key roles in opposing proposed repeals of part (SCA-5 in 2014) or all (Proposition 16 in 2020) of Proposition 209 (i.e., affirmative action ban) in California. Arguably, through campaigns of opposition to “equity,” these Chinese Americans, alongside some other Asian Americans, have capitalized on identity politics to engage in opportunity hoarding (Dhingra, 2020; Diamond & Lewis, in press), driven by racial anxiety (Poon & Sihite, 2016), all within a context of racial capitalism (Melamed, 2015; Robinson, 1983).
Past research has often situated Asian Americans in these policy debates as “racial mascots” used by white anti-equity campaigns; however, Asian Americans are not passive in these conflicts. Although Edward Blum (i.e., the white strategist behind complaints against voting rights and race-conscious college admissions in Shelby v. Holder, Fisher v. UT Austin, and all of the SFFA cases) followed past patterns of “racial mascotting” in purposely recruiting “Asian American” plaintiffs for the SFFA lawsuits against race-conscious admissions, it is clear that some Chinese and other Asian Americans are choosing to participate as partners in these anti-equity efforts (Garces & Poon, 2018; Park & Liu, 2014; Poon & Segoshi, 2018).
Leong’s theory of identity capitalism conceptualizes “in-groups” as those with racial power (i.e., those who possess and benefit from white dominance) who buy and sell “out-group” identities. However, in this case, Chinese Americans represent an out-group expropriating and leveraging the Asian American identity, which is foundationally an identity that relies on coalitional politics for racial justice, and minority status to confuse public discourses about racial equity in education. They force the false framing: If race-conscious admissions policies and integration policies in K-12 are presumably anti-Asian, then these policies are racist.
What happens when the purveyors of identity capitalism are not white? In this working group, I plan to engage in dialogue to explore whether Leong’s framework of identity capitalism is relevant to understanding these confounding Chinese American-led efforts against race-conscious admissions as well as other education policies aimed at racial equity in K-12. My observations of Chinese American opposition to education equity policies since 2013 suggest that these racially minoritized individuals and organizations feed into identity capitalism. However, additional theorizing is needed to complement and extend Leong’s theorizing to make sense of these phenomena.

Author

• OiYan A. Poon, Spencer Foundation