The murder of George Floyd in 2020 by Officer Derek Chauvin, the 2021 Atlanta Spa shootings that left eight people dead — six of whom were Asian women — and similar events served as flashpoints that drew intense public attention to the fatal consequences of racial bias. Prof. Derron Wallace (SOC/ED), the Jacob S. Potofsky Chair in Sociology and associate professor of Sociology and Education at the University, argued that people need to move beyond the crisis. While tragedies like these increase awareness of discrimination against racial minorities and unite people for a common cause, he said that this response usually recedes, leaving policies unchanged. Mia White, an assistant professor at The New School, also criticized academia for its ability to identify problems but not solve them. White referenced a quote from social activist Grace Lee Boggs: “A movement begins when large numbers of people reach the point where they feel they can’t take things the way they are anymore.” 

White believes that people have reached that critical point, which then raises questions regarding how to effectively approach the issue of racism in contemporary times. This year’s Elaine Wong Distinguished Lecture Program titled, “The Fraught Work of Coalitional Spaces,” held on April 18 offered a space to discuss how to engage in coalitional work that is anti-racist, as well as how to confront and critically analyze the history of racism. The School of Arts and Sciences sponsored the lecture, and Prof. Emilie Diouf (AAAS/ENG/WGS), Prof. ChaeRan Freeze (NEJS/WGS), Prof. Dorothy Kim (ENG/WGS) and Prof. Faith Smith (AAAS/ENG/WGS) organized it. Smith moderated the discussion and gave a brief introduction. 

The Elaine Wong Distinguished Lecture Program aims to honor Elaine Wong’s contributions to the University during her 40-year career. Wong played a critical role in creating the Brandeis Pluralism Alliance, Generation One Network, Justice Brandeis Seminar, the Brandeis Core, the Community Engaged Scholars Program and other diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Smith commended Wong for paving the way for other faculty of color at Brandeis and for her continued presence on campus despite retiring in 2021. According to the School of Arts and Sciences’ website for the lecture, “The annual event explores racial, class, gender, sexual and other forms of injustice and inequality; showcases historically marginalized people and perspectives; and/or promotes a diverse, inclusive environment.” Wong was present at the lecture. 

Claire Jean Kim is a professor of political science and Asian American studies at the University of California Irvine. Kim has published numerous books and received high accolades for them. Her first book, “Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City” won the American Political Science Association’s Ralph Bunche Award for the Best Book on Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism, as well as a Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity and Politics. Her other works include “Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age” and “Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World.” 

Kim proposed in her book, “Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World,” that people examine the position of Asian Americans in the United States’ racial hierarchy differently by factoring in anti-Blackness. Kim referenced the two principles — be white, but above all don’t be Black — that define the U.S. racial order outlined in philosopher Lewis Gordon’s 1997 book, “Her Majesty’s Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age.” The first principle addresses white supremacy and the structural advantages white people receive, while the second focuses on how anti-Blackness has been a structuring force in the modern world, fueling the enslavement of people and colonialism. 

While discrimination against Black people has been foundational to the social order in the U.S., Kim observed that the impact of anti-Blackness is absent in Asian American narratives. This research gap is the crux of her book, and she argued that Asian Americans are constituted at the disjuncture between white supremacy — a force that ranks all non-white groups below white people — and anti-Blackness, a force that elevates non-Black groups over Black people. “Where most scholars use either a white supremacy frame or an anti-Blackness frame, I propose we need to think of both and examine how they articulate with one another to produce structural positionality,” she stated. 

Viewed as non-white and non-Black, Asian Americans are simultaneously structurally disadvantaged and vulnerable to exploitation and exclusion, as well as better positioned to achieve upward mobility relative to Black people. Kim claimed that “The status and experience of Asian Americans are indelibly shaped by the fact they are always already understood to be the lesser of two evils,” the two evils being Asian and Black people. 

Through her book, Kim hopes to demonstrate that meaningful coalitional work is not possible without confronting the differentials in power among racialized groups.    

Additionally, Kim explained that anti-Blackness requires constant, active effort to sustain it. She highlighted a quote from academic Robin Kelley: “[T]o say that anti-Blackness is foundational to Western civilization is not to say that it is fixed or permanent [but rather that] it is incredibly fragile and must be constantly remade.” To maintain the subjugation of Black people, the U.S. began to weaponize Asian American’s success stories against Black people’s struggle for equality in the late 1800s. Using Asian Americans as a “false alibi for American society,” oppressors dismiss Black critiques of the state by arguing that anyone can succeed if they work hard enough. 

Similarly, culture can also act as an “alibi” for racism, and Wallace dived into this topic extensively with his book, “The Culture Trap: Ethnic Expectations and Unequal Schooling for Black Youth.” 

His book examines what he calls a “culture trap,” which is when “the overreliance on culture to explain Black students’ achievement and behavior in schools … [creates] a trap that undermines the historical factors and institutional processes that shape how Black students experience schooling.” Wallace argued that culture can be utilized to obfuscate racism, pit racial minorities against each other and maintain white supremacy. His research focused on how, in particular, conservative actors in states use culture to foster tension and create divisions among African Americans, Black Caribbeans and Black Africans. Organizing groups into two categories, possessing good cultures or bad cultures, to explain social and educational outcomes ignores how institutionalized racism affects the schooling of Black children. 

Drawing from his fieldwork of interviewing students from public schools in London and New York City, Wallace illuminated the fact that Black people are positioned differently in each context. While since the 1920s, U.S. society considered Black Caribbeans a high-achieving model minority relative to African Americans, the U.K. exhibited the opposite, starting in the 1960s. Even though he focused on cases in the U.S. and the U.K., Wallace underscored the fact that these dynamics are not unique to these countries. 

Wallace highlighted how an emphasis on culture leaves out key structural factors that can explain why Black Caribbeans receive different labels in the two countries. He pointed out that differences in the positionalities of different groups of Black minorities can depend on different modes of incorporation: enslavement and forced migration to the U.S. or voluntary immigration. Moreover, the order of Black migration matters. Due to generations of African Americans’ advocacy and achievement of landmark civil rights legislation, the large number of Black Caribbeans immigrating to the U.S. in the 1960s found a more hospitable environment to settle down in. On the other hand, Black Caribbeans in the U.K. did not have a similar welcoming environment; instead, their civil rights advocacy acted as a cushion for future Black African immigrants in the 1980s and 90s. Furthermore, whether minorities were primarily colonialist subjects of the U.S. or the U.K. also produced different results because cultural context matters: Black Caribbeans’ culture acquires different meanings depending on the political and economic contexts. 

“These claims about the cultural differences between Black Caribbeans and African Americans proved both ideologically significant and politically expedient,” Wallace stated. Ultimately, his main argument is that when white conservatives emphasize differences in culture –– such as claiming that Black Caribbeans value saving, hard work, investment and education more than African Americans –– they are promoting a false narrative that culture is the main culprit for gaps in success among the two groups. Similar to Kim’s comment on the weaponization of Asian American success stories to downplay the injustice Black people face, conservatives used the success of Black Caribbeans –– and the attribution of their advancement to cultural differences –– to eliminate the importance of race. Dismissing racism as an obstacle to mobility proves to be problematic because white conservatives use this tactic to demonstrate that state-sponsored policies addressing racial discrimination are unnecessary. 

Building on earlier appeals for placing Asian American studies and Black studies in dialogue with each other, Wallace mentioned that these disciplines require a clearer theorization of the relationship between the model minority myth for Asian people and a culture of poverty for Black people. He highlighted that “There is no model minority without the failing minority … The discursive framing of Asians and Black people of multiple cultures are structurally and politically contingent.” The talk stressed the significance of recognizing the ways anti-Blackness influences other marginalized groups’ positions in society and expanding the lenses scholars use to investigate racial dynamics has the potential to yield greater interracial understandings and coalition building.   

Kim also broke down parts of her book and explained how it attempts to bring back anti-Blackness into the narratives of Asian American history. For example, Kim compares conditions for Chinese immigrant laborers with the periods of enslavement, Reconstruction and Jim Crow laws. Paradoxically, Chinese foreignness meant that they were ostracized in the U.S. but still viewed as belonging in China and as partaking in humanity and nationality because of China’s image as a respectable civilization. “Exclusion expelled the Chinese from the U.S., but not from the family of man or the family of nations –– exclusion and belonging,” Kim said. 

On the other hand, enslaved people were not viewed the same way. Kim mentioned Justice Peter Daniel’s concurring opinion in the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court case. In his opinion, Daniel disavows the idea that enslaved people have a nationality, stating that Black people “never have been acknowledged as belonging to the family of nations; that, as amongst them, there never has been known or recognized by the inhabitants of other countries anything partaking of the character of nationality, or civil or political polity.” Another contradiction that emerged was anti-Chinese sentiments during Reconstruction. “The Civilization of Blaine,” a cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast and published in Harper’s Weekly in 1879, pointed out that a policy of Chinese exclusion lacked justification because simultaneously, Black people were receiving citizenship and voting rights. The drawing depicted Senator James Blaine, a Republican representing Maine and a supporter of Chinese exclusion, physically supporting a Black man, drawn in a subservient pose, who holds a piece of paper that says “vote.” Blaine steps on a piece of paper representing the 1868 Burlingame-Seward Treaty, the first bilateral treaty between the U.S. and China, which reduced restrictions on immigration and provided more protection for Chinese citizens living in America. Ignored by Blaine, a Chinese man surrounded by objects representing China’s power, asks in the caption, “Am I not a Man and a Brother?”   

Due to the complexities of each group’s status in relation to another, the tension between non-white racial groups breeds emotional pain. White shared her personal experiences dealing with racism as an Afro-Asian. One time during the pandemic, a young Black woman spoke to her in a derogatory manner and came at White with her car. White thought: “In that moment, what is my choice? Is my choice to reproduce anti-Blackness of myself, of this sister that does not see in me what I see in her, or is it to understand that we are so traumatized that we are unable to grapple with the meaning of each other in a moment such as that.” 

The issue of race can be incredibly hard to disentangle, and White stated that more compassion and understanding are needed to begin and undergird these difficult conversations. 

“It’s never been more clear to me that as we explore … that we have to hold spaces for convergences and divergences, uncertainties and instabilities between each of us in our relationships,” she said. “Let me say it more plainly: all of us have been raised in a context of white supremacy, and we will screw up on a regular basis –– you, probably me, already today, multiple times with regard to racial logics. Even us wonderful academics will reproduce and rehearse anti-Blackness and anti-Asian violence.” White acknowledged that growing up in a racist society impacts how people experience and handle the concept of race, and the significance of academic curriculums as a tool to change and challenge the preconceptions people grow up learning. 

Kim also agreed that education is essential. Kim discussed how Black studies helped her understand anti-Blackness as a major global phenomenon. She believed that people who solely examine what non-white groups have in common are only looking at half the picture. 

“But you’re not looking at how anti-Blackness is the force that actually differentiates non-white groups from one another and pushes Asians into a position of relative advantage,” she stated, and that “without that, we’re just missing those historical truths … Without those truths, we cannot effectively build coalitions.” Kim thought that Black studies should be required at all levels of education. 

The mental toll from enduring a society founded on institutional racism leads to the creation of legitimate grievances. “Sometimes we have hurt each other because we were very tired from trying to hold together so many broken shards,” White lamented. She calls for more tenderness, collective knowledge creation and mutual study across communities to heal racial divisions and spur collaboration among marginalized groups to shoulder the burden of confronting racist structures. As a mother, she tells her children that “sometimes, as people of mixed descent, we also have to accept that people will laugh at us, especially when we talk about love and tenderness in the face of true brutality. That is very very hard to tell teenagers.” White passes on tools to her children to prepare them for an unequal world and urges her own students and the audience to do the same with future generations.    

White also shared a striking interaction with her mother after the 2021 Atlanta Spa shootings. Her mother told her not to read the newspapers after the shootings occurred. One of the women who died shared the same name as White’s mom, and due to having some mental health challenges, her mother thought the government was telling her that they wanted her dead. White told this story to show that a large amount of repair work will be needed to address these ongoing race issues. One Black social theory of space White teaches to combat such issues is blues epistemology. This theory aims to reframe how people think about knowledge, as well as operationalize grief and love. 

All speakers recognized that one group’s fight for equality does not exist in a vacuum, but instead that all struggles for justice influence and depend on one another. Wallace commented that “The realization of this vision we share requires an anti-racism that isn’t just about ‘just us’ but that is deeply invested in justice for all of us [and] that recognizes our contingencies.” By studying the intersectionality of different forms of oppression, the panelists argued that people would be one step closer to achieving meaningful coalitional work.