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  3. Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World
  • Cited by 72
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    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      22 June 2023
      29 June 2023
      ISBN:
      9781009222280
      9781009222259
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009222280
      Dimensions:
      (229 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.74kg, 400 Pages
      Dimensions:
      Weight & Pages:
      • Subjects:
      Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Area Studies, American Studies, American Government, Politics and Policy, Politics and International Relations, Sociology
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    Subjects:
    Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Area Studies, American Studies, American Government, Politics and Policy, Politics and International Relations, Sociology
    Information

    Book description

    Where do Asian Americans fit into the U.S. racial order? Are they subordinated comparably to Black people or permitted adjacency to whiteness? The racial reckoning prompted by the police murder of George Floyd and the surge in anti-Asian hate during the COVID-19 pandemic raise these questions with new urgency. Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World is a groundbreaking study that will shake up scholarly and popular thinking on these matters. Theoretically innovative and based on rigorous historical research, this provocative book tells us we must consider both anti-Blackness and white supremacy—and the articulation of the two forces—in order to understand U.S. racial dynamics. The construction of Asian Americans as not-white but above all not-Black has determined their positionality for nearly two centuries. How Asian Americans choose to respond to this status will help to define racial politics in the U.S. in the twenty-first century.

    Awards

    Winner, 2025 Best Book Award in Social Science, Association of Asian American Studies

    Reviews

    ‘Claire Kim's Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World is yet another critically important work from a leading theoretician of racial politics within the U.S. An acute observer of the complicated racial dynamics of the twenty-first century U.S., Kim centers anti-blackness as critical for understanding the complex racial dynamics that continue be central to shaping U.S. society and politics.’

    Michael Dawson - The University of Chicago

    ‘Sure to elicit controversy and debate, Kim offers a stunning and provocative account of the racial positioning of Asian Americans in a pervasively anti-Black social order. In a work of enormous breadth, she challenges prevailing narratives and paradigms of Asian American history and politics by illustrating how Asian Americans have benefitted from anti-Blackness. Grasping the functionality of ‘better than Black’ for white supremacy becomes essential to imagining how anti-Asian racism might be framed and contested.’

    Michael Omi - University of California, Berkeley

    ‘A razor-sharp retelling of Asian American history…The story of race and rights in the United States cannot be told without Asian Americans. This book will show you why.’

    Jeff Guo Source: NPR Books We Love

    ‘Kim foregrounds the singularity of anti-Blackness and its distinction from other forms of racism. Kim argues that while white supremacy has impacted Asians and Asian Americans through regimes of imperialism and exclusion, anti-Blackness - as the foundation of modernity’s racial order - has operated not as an analogue to anti-Asian racism but as ‘a structural force that curbs and delimits it.’ … The book offers a bold revision of the foundations of Asian American studies, whose focus on white-on-Asian domination, Kim argues, has obscured the role of anti-Blackness in Asian racialization.’

    Mark Tseng-Putterman Source: Los Angeles Review of Books

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