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Black‐Asian Solidarities and the Impasses of “How‐To” Anti‐racisms

Black‐Asian Solidarities and the Impasses of “How‐To” Anti‐racisms During the 2020 summer of global uprisings in defense of Black life, widely circulated anti‐racist reading lists created heightened demand for books that promised to teach readers how to examine their internalized racism. Situated in U.S. racial liberalism’s extensive literary genealogy, anti‐racist “how‐to” literature has historically swooped in during moments of heightened racialized confusion to restore narratives of American exceptionalism. This literature sustains the tenuous promise that racism is something that one can challenge in interpersonal relationships and by following specific steps toward individualized behavior correction. Building on a broader body of work that has critiqued liberal anti‐racisms for detracting from abolitionst struggles against racialized injustice, this article specifically frames the limitations that “how‐to anti‐racisms” place on transgressive multiracial coalition building. Through ethnographic analysis of discourses and practices that move through various sites of contemporary Black‐Asian American activist encounters, I build on Black and radical women of color feminist theorizations of solidarity to show how “how‐tos” destabilize coalition building by overdetermining resolutions to conflict. I argue that in “settling” anti‐racism into a repertoire of predetermined steps, how‐to‐ism constrains the contradiction, anger, and uncertainty that is fundamental to forging the radical accountability central to abolitionist work. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal for the Anthropology of North America Wiley

Black‐Asian Solidarities and the Impasses of “How‐To” Anti‐racisms

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References (9)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.
ISSN
2475-5389
eISSN
2475-5389
DOI
10.1002/nad.12139
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

During the 2020 summer of global uprisings in defense of Black life, widely circulated anti‐racist reading lists created heightened demand for books that promised to teach readers how to examine their internalized racism. Situated in U.S. racial liberalism’s extensive literary genealogy, anti‐racist “how‐to” literature has historically swooped in during moments of heightened racialized confusion to restore narratives of American exceptionalism. This literature sustains the tenuous promise that racism is something that one can challenge in interpersonal relationships and by following specific steps toward individualized behavior correction. Building on a broader body of work that has critiqued liberal anti‐racisms for detracting from abolitionst struggles against racialized injustice, this article specifically frames the limitations that “how‐to anti‐racisms” place on transgressive multiracial coalition building. Through ethnographic analysis of discourses and practices that move through various sites of contemporary Black‐Asian American activist encounters, I build on Black and radical women of color feminist theorizations of solidarity to show how “how‐tos” destabilize coalition building by overdetermining resolutions to conflict. I argue that in “settling” anti‐racism into a repertoire of predetermined steps, how‐to‐ism constrains the contradiction, anger, and uncertainty that is fundamental to forging the radical accountability central to abolitionist work.

Journal

Journal for the Anthropology of North AmericaWiley

Published: Apr 1, 2021

Keywords: ; ; ;

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