Contestations over Anti-Asian Racism: Making Meaning of #StopAsianHate

• In Event: Asian Pacific American Political Caucus - Frontier Research on Asian Americans as Community Activists, Voters, Candidates, and Elected Officials

Abstract

The convergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the Stop Asian Hate movement in the last two years has demanded a renewed reckoning by Asian Americans about what “Asian American” means politically, their role in movements for racial justice, and what constitutes “racial justice.” These questions are especially salient given the fraught place of Asian Americans in the racial hierarchy, as marginalized while also relatively valorized (Kim 1999). While scholars have theorized the top-down processes through which Asian Americans are racialized, less is known about how Asian Americans on the ground are making meaning of the place of Asian Americans in the racial hierarchy. Focusing on Asian American organizations during the Stop Asian Hate movement, this paper investigates how Asian Americans understand and navigate their ambiguous racial position by examining contestations over what constitutes anti-Asian racism. In this contemporary moment, as well as historically, Asian American organizations have been sites for the production, dissemination, and negotiation of group meanings and group boundaries (Mora and Okamoto 2019; Rogers and Kim 2021). One key way organizations do this is through producing and releasing statements. I collect and analyze a dataset of press releases and statements made by Asian American local and national organizations from 2020 to 2021 on the murder of George Floyd, the Atlanta shootings, the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, and other issues of anti-Asian racism and anti-Black racism. Using content analysis, I analyze the various ways organizations construct collective histories, define the content and scope of group interests, and situate Asian Americans both in the racial hierarchy and in relation to other communities of color. I provide a framework to understand the contested nature of Asian American identity and anti-Asian racism, arguing for the necessity to attend to Asian America as discursively constructed (Beltrán 2010). I outline the implications of the diverging contemporary rhetoric of the Stop Asian Hate movement for the relationship of Asian America to the hate crimes framework, state violence, and multi-racial solidarity.

Author

• Sonya Chen, Princeton University