Framework

[Torres] RACISM IS RAMPANT IN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS – it affects all aspects of

schooling, so an anti-racist orientation is uniquely key now.

Torres: Torres, Christina. [8 th

As more and more teachers, administrators, schools and organizations are questioning their

practices and looking at the racist history of their institutions, many are finally asking, “How we can listen to
and support Black students, teachers and communities who have been systemically silenced for too long?” This question is essential, and

examining anti-Blackness in our practice is something we all must be looking at. Looking at anti-Blackness or

inequities brought about by systems rooted in white supremacy and racism is something all

students should be doing. While more institutions, including primarily or historically white ones, are committing to this work,

white teachers with primarily white students can feel hesitant to discuss these issues since

they may not feel it affects them. This idea is a fundamental misunderstanding of what

anti-racist work actually is. Anti-racist work means acknowledging that racist beliefs and

structures are pervasive in all aspects of our lives—from education to housing to climate

change—and then actively doing work to tear down those beliefs and structures. Those beliefs

and structures don’t just exist in primarily white/and or privileged institutions—they thrive there. Schools that house mostly

students and teachers who have benefited from white privilege can lack the perspective to

push back on institutional malpractice or racist mindsets that may be present. In addition,

it is difficult to convince those with power and privilege to give those privileges up without

clear education and work to understand why doing so is a necessity for true justice in our

society. Doing the work in spaces of privilege may look different, but educators cannot

pretend that anti-racist work doesn’t exist simply because their student body isn’t directly
harmed by racism. There are clear aims that primarily white and otherwise privileged institutions must work toward in the fight
against racism. Teachers must re-evaluate their curriculum. When teaching standards and core curricula have been developed for your students,

it’s easy to simply follow along. However, it’s important to remember that our education system has been founded on historically racist practices,

including silencing those from disenfranchised communities. It’s not just BIPOC who need to see themselves in the literature or history they

study. White students need to hear those perspectives as well, just as straight and cisgender students need to read LGBTQ+ stories. This is

because students need not just mirrors but also windows into other cultures, as Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop notes in her essay “Mirrors, Windows

and Sliding Glass Doors.” Students from communities with white privilege need to hear voices from other perspectives in order to grow their own

thinking. Those perspectives need to be diverse and empowering as well—only showing Black suffering or slavery does not begin to break down

problematic beliefs about Black people. Instead, students coming from positions of power need to see and understand the power and agency of

those who have been historically disenfranchised, particularly since society frequently tells them otherwise. This will allow white students and

teachers to have a more accurate and nuanced understanding of our history, while also ensuring they can center BIPOC voices and be allies and

accomplices instead of “saviors.” Students need to understand privilege and rethink power. Students from privileged communities can struggle to

understand privilege since they may feel that they have had to work hard or struggle at times in their lives. Teachers must help students

understand how privilege works at a systemic level that may have given students an edge that, while it may be one they didn’t ask for, is still very

real. The work does not stop there, though. It can be easy in teaching privilege to fall into the trap of “white guilt” or “privilege guilt” (or even

“survivor guilt” for BIPOC who have moved up socioeconomically and have internalized the belief that their communities were something to be

“survived”). While guilt can be an important emotion to notice and process, educators should help students move through it to a place of action.

Beyond “feeling bad” about generations of oppression, how can they use this knowledge to

advocate for change and begin breaking down their own racist beliefs? How can they also

reframe their understandings of privilege so that they stop prioritizing hegemonic ideas of

success and worth? Some of that will mean teaching students to analyze and reframe how

they see values and stories from other cultures. Most of us were taught to praise white-dominant cultural ideas:
financial success, rugged individualism, paternalism. Because of this, cultures with different priorities may not be seen as “successful” or

“valuable” in our eyes and in the eyes of our students. We need to teach students with privilege not to be

“saviors” for historically disenfranchised communities, but rather to listen to, value and

stand in kinship with them so we can work together toward justice. Schools must interrogate their
practices and how they gained institutional privilege to begin with.
[ROJ] Since discussions about Kant and util can happen anywhere, but those about race are

under fire, the Role of the Judge is to Promote Anti-Racist Education in the Debate Space,

meaning that they must endorse discussions about racism.

[Eng & Han] And COLONIZATION IS AT THE ROOT OF BOTH ANTI-BLACKNESS

AND ANTI-ASIANESS – the expectation of Asian mimicry and White appropriation of Asian

culture transcends into educational spaces.

Eng & Han: Eng, David L. [Professor of Asian American Studies, the Program in Comparative literature and Literary Theory, and the
Program in Gender Sexuality and Women’s Studies at the University of Pennsylvania], Han, Shinhee [Psychotherapist in New York City, she has
worked on the counseling services at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Barnard College and Columbia University]. “Racial
Melancholia, Racial Dissociation.” Duke University Press, January 2019. BZ//AC

Racial melancholia as psychic splitting and national dis-ease opens on the interconnected terrains of mimicry, ambivalence, and the stereotype.

In his seminal essay “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,”

Homi Bhabha describes the ways in which a colonial regime compels the colonized subject

to mimic Western ideals of whiteness. At the same time, this mimicry is also condemned to

failure. Bhabha writes, “Colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other,

as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite. Which is to say, that the

discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence; in order to be effective,

mimicry must continually reproduce its slippage, its excess, its difference.… Almost the

same but not white.”28 Bhabha locates and labels the social imperative to assimilate as the colonial structure of mimicry. He
highlights not only the social performance but also its inevitable, built-in failure. This doubling of difference that is almost the same but not quite,

almost the same but not white, results in ambivalence, which comes to define the failure of mimicry. Here we elaborate on Bhabha’s observations

of mimicry with its intrasubjective internalization into the psychic domain through the logic of racial melancholia. It is important to remember

that, as with Bhabha’s analysis of mimicry in the colony, Freud marks ambivalence as one of melancholia’s defining characteristics. In describing

the genealogy of ambivalence in melancholia, Freud himself moves from the domain of the social to the realm of the psychic. He notes that the

“conflict due to ambivalence, which sometimes arises from real experiences, sometimes more from constitutional factors, must not be overlooked

among the preconditions of melancholia.”29 According to Freud, melancholia not only traces an internalized pathological identification with

what was once an external but now lost ideal. In this moving from outside to inside, we also get a strong sense of how social injunctions of

mimicry configure individual psychic structures as split and dis-eased. The ambivalence that comes to define Freud’s concept of melancholia is

one that finds its origins and routes in social history—in colonial and racial structures impelling performative displays of mimicry and man.
They add,
This discussion on intergenerational dilemmas of immigration and assimilation brings us to the related issue of mourning, melancholia, and

language. Nelson, a first-generation Japanese American student who emigrated from Osaka to New Jersey when he was five, sought therapy with

me (Dr. Han) in 1996, presenting chronic struggles with depression associated with racial conflict. Nelson is the eldest child and has two siblings,

a brother and a sister, both of whom were born in the United States. Before Nelson entered school, his mother spoke only Japanese to the

children. When Nelson started kindergarten, his teacher admonished his mother to replace Japanese with English at home if she wanted her

children to assimilate and to become successful students. Despite the mother’s broken English, she followed the teacher’s instructions

assiduously, speaking only English to her children. Nelson recounts a story that took place later in grade

school. During a reading lesson, he mispronounced “crooked” as “crookd”(one syllable).

His teacher shamed him publicly for his failed speech act—his failed act of mimicry —and

demanded to know where he learned to mispronounce such a simple word. Nelson

reluctantly replied that he learned this pronunciation from his mother. Nelson remembers,

in particular, feelings of social embarrassment and shame from the ridicule of his teacher

and classmates. What we learn about Nelson’s case history is that, although his original connection to the primary object (the mother)
was through the Japanese language, this connection was interrupted by a foreign property, English. The mother’s poor mimicry of English

severed and revised the earliest mother-child attachment, one brokered in Japanese. As such, Nelson could no longer mirror himself from his

mother, in Japanese or in English. This estrangement from language, both native and foreign, is a double loss. Although acquiring a new language

(English) should be perceived as a positive cognitive development, what is often not acknowledged sufficiently is the concomitant psychic trauma

triggered by the loss of what had once been a safe, nurturing, and familiar language to the young child (Japanese). The loss of Japanese as a safe

and nurturing object reveals another way to think about racial melancholia in relation to processes of immigration and assimilation. In Nelson’s

case history, melancholia results not only from a thwarted identification with a dominant ideal of unattainable whiteness but also a vexed

relationship to a compromised Japaneseness. Nelson’s situation reveals how on two fronts ideals of whiteness and ideals of Japaneseness are lost

and unresolved. Here the problem of accent marks an impossible social compliance. In both

instances, language is the privileged vehicle— the privileged property— by which

standards of successful assimilation and failed integration are measured. In this sense,

language itself might be thought of as a kind of property right and stereotype, demanding

a flawless mimicry on the part of the young Nelson, whose failed performance leads him to
shame and self-abasement at a crucial moment of social and psychic development. Nelson’s

transition from Japanese to English is another example of the negotiation between

mourning and melancholia in the immigration and assimilation process. That is, although

he suffers a loss and revaluation of his mother tongue, his transition into the adopted ideal

of the English language is anything but smooth. We need to emphasize that the shaming

ritual to which the grade-school teacher subjected Nelson—one all too common in the

Darwinian space of the classroom— is one that not merely makes his transition into

English difficult but also demonizes and repudiates the mother (and the mother tongue and

accent) at the same time. What was once a loved and safe object is retroactively transformed into an object of shame and
insecurity. To the extent that the figure of the mother originally represents safe notions of “home,” Nelson’s estrangement from his mother, and

from his mother tongue, renders her unheimlich— unhomely, unfamiliar, uncanny— a topic that critical race scholar Mari Matsuda has explored

in her legal analyses of accent discrimination.44 The relationship between language, pedagogy, and assimilation into a mainstream national

citizenry is examined also in a short story by Monique T. D. Truong. “Kelly”(1991) is about a young Vietnamese refugee, Thuy-Mai, who finds

herself in the improbable space of a North Carolina classroom of 1975. Truong’s narrator composes a distressing epistolary monologue to her one

and only (and now absent) friend from that dark period of her life, Kelly. In doing so, she reenacts the melancholic logic discussed above. That is,

an intersubjective external dialogue meant for two parties is melancholically internalized and transformed into an intrasubjective monologue of

one remarkable for its anger and solipsism. What is an epistolary, after all, other than an impassioned (but not necessarily answered) plea to the

other? Truong’s narrator recalls their grade-school teacher: Kelly, remember how Mrs. Hammerick talked about Veteran’s Day? How about the

Day of Infamy when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor? Mrs. Hammerick, you know, the mayor’s wife always had a sweet something

surrounding her like she had spent too much time pulling taffy.... Kelly, you only knew that she liked the Beths and the Susans cause they wore

pink and never bulged and buckled out of their shirt plackets. I was scared of her like no dark corners could ever scare me. You have to know that

all the while she was teaching us history she was telling, with her language for the deaf, blind, and dumb; she was telling all the boys in our class

that I was Pearl and my last name was Harbor. They understood her like she was speaking French and their names were all Claude and Pierre.45

Truong’s story expands our discussion of language and its performative effects on the constitution of good and bad national subjects. Here,

Mrs. Hammerick’s common language for the “deaf, blind, and dumb”—a language from

which Thuy-Mai is emphatically excluded—is used to create and then separate good

students from bad students within the institutionalized space of the classroom. The Susans

and the Beths, the Claudes and the Pierres, are all, as Louis Althusser would put it,
“interpellated”by the mayor’s wife as good citizen- subjects of the classroom and nation-

state.46 Truong emphasizes how education is a primary site through which narratives of

national identity and belonging are established and reinforced through pedagogical

compliance. At the same time, the Vietnamese refugee, Thuy-Mai, is pathologized as Asian

enemy, dismissively labeled “Pearl Harbor,”erroneously conflated with the Japanese, and

implicitly rendered a menace to the coherence and integrity of the US nation-state. Mrs.

Hammerick is, of course, not literally speaking French (though Vietnam was of course

colonized earlier by France), but Truong’s attention to language underscores the ways in

which an unconscious discourse of colonialism and race, of national inclusion and

exclusion, is circulated in the classroom. Furthermore, as Lowe points out, Mrs. Hammerick’s nationalizing tract is
simultaneously a gendered discourse: “The narrator’s observations that the teacher’s history lesson addresses ‘all the boys’further instantiates

how the American nationalist narrative recognizes, recruits, and incorporates male subjects, while ‘feminizing’and silencing the students who do

not conform to that notion of patriotic subjectivity.”47 Racialized subjects, such as Nelson and Thuy-Mai, become “good”citizens when they

identify with the paternal state and accept, as Lowe summarizes, “the terms of this identification by subordinating [their] racial difference and

denying [their] ties with the feminized and racialized ‘motherland.’”48 In the following section, we turn to Melanie Klein’s theories of good and

bad objects, of good and bad mothers and motherlands, to explore the politics of aggression and destructiveness, of guilt and reparation, as they

configure the psychic limits of racial melancholia and expand on Freud’s account of loss and interminable mourning.

[ROB] Thus, the Role of the Ballot is to Endorse the Best Anti-Racist Resistance Strategy.

That means we weigh the round based on which debater’s advocacy better combats racism –

NOT as a footnote to some big stick extinction scenario that directs the discussion somewhere

else. Filter those out – we call for impacts about racism itself.
 A. Links

1. [A2 LARP – Generic] (One,) The aff frames outer space exploration through a “problem-

solution” lens that treats passing a policy as key to “helping” people, and racism as the failure of

specific weapons. Specific links:

2. [A2 LARP – Topic] (Two,) They use policy of space appropriation ban to stop violence –

they imagine that passing a policy will resolve nuke war and extinction. Specific links:

3. [A2 Util] (Three,) Their framework takes a holistic view of pain and pleasure, assuming those

are universal goods that look the same for all people – they can’t account for relevant differences

between groups, since they abstract away from that in their tags. Specific links:
 B. Impact

[Haskins] Private appropriation of space furthers a logic of racist appropriation.

Haskins: Haskins, Caroline. [Current Editorial Intern for the Future section at The Outline. Former Editorial Intern for Motherboard, Vice's
science/tech site.] “THE RACIST LANGUAGE OF SPACE EXPLORATION”, The Outline, August 14, 2018. EM//AC

In the Destination Mars subcommittee meeting, Cruz said, “At the end of the day, the commercial sector is going to be able to invest billions

more in dollars in getting this job [of getting to Mars] done.” In his Thursday remarks regarding the Space Force, Pence also implied that celestial

territories would be treated as private property (even though owning private property in space is explicitly illegal per the Outer Space Treaty,

which the U.S. and dozens of other nations signed in 1967). “While other nations increasingly possess the capability to operate in space, not all of

them share our commitment to freedom, to private property, and the rule of law,” Pence said. “So as we continue to carry American leadership in

space, so also will we carry America’s commitment to freedom into this new frontier.” This approach to public-private partnerships directly

mirrors colonist practices. For instance, the British East India Company violently colonized parts of India on behalf of the company, but over

time, ownership of the stolen land shifted to Great Britain. While these risks feel a part of a far away future, in the present, idealizing colonization

as a positive, replicable aspect of American history speaks to an unsettling indifference from leaders about the violent history of colonization.

And by referencing historical events that victimized people of color, leaders paint a vision of the future in which people of color continue to be

excluded, Walkowicz said that the social and economic legacy of colonization is ignored. By using narratives of

adventurism and heroics, white Americans were able to convince other white Americans

that they were not only entitled to steal and conquest land and persons, but that it was their

destiny. Ralph said to The Outline that this mythology remains central to the way

Americans conceptualize their history and culture. “Colonization is portrayed as a heroic

conquest,” Ralph said. “These practices are framed as central to American identity, essential to governance, politics, and all major

social institution. But not depicted as a colonizing that is one caused by violence, displacement, dispossession.” Even when people

aren’t explicitly referring to settlements in space as “colonies,” they still use the rhetoric of

colonizing the New World and the American frontier, which erases the stories of and

violence against the people of color who lived and ranched in the region. But how did this

language start being used in the first place? Presidents have also used frontierism and

colonialism to get white citizens behind their agenda. When President John F. Kennedy
announced his intention to bring Americans to the Moon in 1962, he paraphrased one of

the earliest colonists on the North American continent. “William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of
the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and

overcome with answerable courage,” Kennedy said. Bradford was the governor of the Plymouth Bay Colony at the time of the Pequot War. In an

overnight attack, British colonizers massacred four hundred soldiers, non-soldiers, and children. Bradford later described the act of genocide as a

Christian victory. “...victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prays therof to God,” Bradford wrote, “who had wrought so wonderfully

for them, thus to inclose their enemies in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.” Although

Kennedy did not characterize his vision for the Moon as creating a “colony” specifically, the association he wanted to create is clear: The

Moon is the next version of the New World, the next frontier for American conquest. In his
speech, Kennedy continues that men like Bradford teach us that “man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be

deterred.” However, if “man” is a stand-in for “white colonizers,” “knowledge and progress” unabashedly brushes over the lives of indigenous

persons and people of color that were lost in their quest to “explore.” It’s a profusely sanitized version of reality. “It’s fascinating that a term like

‘colonizing’ can be seen in neutral terms when it can’t exist without violence and dispossession,” Ralph said. It can’t exist without violence to

establish a political hierarchy. Every colonial project is about managing populations, subjugating people, extracting resources.” But Kennedy was

not the first person to use of colonizing language in the context of space. John Wilkins, one of the first people who ever theorized about

humanity’s future in space, wrote “A Discourse Concerning a New World and Another Planet” back in 1638, where he argued that the Moon will

be a place for human habitation in the future. Although it was a piece of science fiction theorization at the time, Wilkins justified his argument by

saying that God created the Earth and stars for people to use in his honor. Colonizers are adventurers, Wilkins argues, whose ideals are worth

replicating on other planets. “The invention of some other means for our convenience to the Moon cannot seem more incredible to us, than this

did at first to them, to be discouraged in our hopes of the like success,” Wilkins wrote, admitting that any mission to the moon would be far in the

future. “We have not now any [Sir Francis] Drake, or Columbus, to undertake this voyage, or any Daedalus to invent a convenience through the

air.” Sir Francis Drake was a slave-trader, and of course, Christopher Columbus is responsible for the genocide of almost 3 million people on the

island of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti). As space travel has become more technologically feasible, science-fiction writers

have speculated about how a space society would actually function. Arthur C. Clarke envisioned that “colonial” would be a dirty word in space in

his 1954 book Earthflight: “And to do [enter Solar politics], one had to go to Earth; as in the days of the Caesars, there was no alternative. Those

who believed otherwise or pretended to — risked being tagged with the dreaded word colonial.’” For Clarke, colonialism was

equated with privilege in a space society, not because of racism and violence on Earth. Later in the novel, Clarke doesn’t
hesitate to compare travelling between planets, and the nobility of doing so, with British colonizers travelling between continents in earlier

centuries. Adilifu Nama, a professor of African American Studies at Loyola Marymount University who has written about the representation of

race in science fiction, said that science fiction movies and books during the 1950s and 1960s often included narratives of invasion from alien

lifeforms directly alongside conceptualizations of existing in other worlds. These anxious science fiction narratives became popular during the

Civil Rights Movement. “We had [an] invasion emerging [during the Civil Rights Movement] of black folks invading these once pristine white
spaces: with public transportation, public schools, and eventually particular neighbourhoods and black folks having access to better, more upscale

neighbourhoods,” Nama said. “So there is also this invasion society around racial purity, and the tensions of science fiction can be read not only

as Cold War anxieties, but racial anxieties about the other.”

[Ngo] Colonization is at the heart of anti-Blackness and Anti-Asainness – it’s explanatory for

anti-Blackness amongst Asian people.

Ngo: Ngo. Gracie [Contributing Writer at Kode Mag. Kode MagSan Francisco State University.] “The myth of the ‘model minority’ reinforces
White supremacy” El Tecolote. http://eltecolote.org/content/en/commentary/the-myth-of-the-model-minority-reinforces-white-supremacy/
AZ//AC

I am Asian American and from a predominantly Asian-American community in Southern California. I’ve known my entire life

that I have to work twice as hard as my White counterparts to garner the same respect, to

get the same job––and mine is not a unique experience. As with other children of immigrants, I was told

to keep my head down and mind my own business. My parents told me that the only things

that I’ve earned are the things that I’ve worked for. But after the 2016 presidential election, I had to reconsider

why these messages are harmful to our community and to others. The Asian “model minority” myth is a pervasive

stereotype, a byproduct of colonialism and racism. American racism has crafted the myth

that Asian Americans are naturally inclined to succeed because we work harder than other

minority groups. It has weaponized our stories of success to tear other minorities down. At
Harvard, Asian Americans have been exploited in a transparent attempt to dissolve Affirmative Action. In 1974, writer Frank Chin said of Asian

Americans, “Whites love us because we’re not Black.” The Asian-American community’s apathy toward the

blatant persecution of undocumented immigrants and Black poverty is borne out of the

myth that we are more hardworking and thus more deserving of our success. But with a closer

look, it is obvious that this is an intentionally harmful ethos. In truth, people with Southeast Asian

heritage are more likely to be afflicted by poverty and crime than East Asians. And just this year,

Trump has ordered the deportation of several Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees from

the Vietnam War. When Trump says he will deport undocumented immigrants, he also
means us. Our proximity to Whiteness has given us a sense of safety, but we will never be

White. We are vulnerable, just like other minorities are. We need to stop the appropriation

of our success by White America to oppress the Black-American and Latino-American

communities. We are not more deserving of respect, success or empathy. We are all immigrants or

children of immigrants. Asian Americans must take a hard stance against the racism and

xenophobia that plagues the United States. Trump’s policies affect Asian Americans, but

even if they didn’t we would still have a responsibility to utilize our unique privilege to help

uplift our minority friends.

Thus, the alternative is Afro-Orientalism as a recognition of the anti-Asian roots at the

heart of private appropriation of outer space. To clarify, this is a divestment from the

political and explains issues of anti-blackness.

Kim 1: Kim. Nami [Retired professor with multiple published books, she used to teach comparative religious studies] “Engaging Afro/black-
Orientalism: A Proposal” Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion, 2010. http://raceandreligion.com/JRER/Volume_1_(2010)_files/Kim
%201%2007.pdf AC

Scholars in Black Studies, American Studies, and cultural studies have recently paid close attention to a trajectory of what some call

Afro/black-Orientalism or AfroAsian encounters in the work of African American

intellectuals, writers, artists, and political activists from the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries.1

Scholars in those fields have examined the various ways in which African American

intellectuals and activists expressed political solidarity between people of African descent

and people of Asian descent by denouncing the Western imperialism, colonialism, and

racism that had created what W. E. B. Du Bois called the “world color lines.” What

scholars now call Afro/black-Orientalism or AfroAsian encounters is not only anti-

colonial, antiracist, and anti-imperialist in its stance but also a search for Afro-Asian

connections and coalitions. What does Afro/black-Orientalism have to do with religious/theological studies? Can engaging
Afro/black-Orientalism provide a new direction for religious/theological studies, in general, and Asian/Asian Pacific North American

religious/theological studies, in particular? To put it differently, what can religious/theological studies from an Asian Pacific North American

feminist perspective2 learn from Afro/black-Orientalism or AfroAsian encounters as it continues to struggle with issues about Americanness,

citizenship, democracy, imperialism, moral agency, and the intersectionality of religion, race, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality? In his

introduction to African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, Gayraud Wilmore suggests that questions, such as how does

African American religious studies relate to “Black Studies, African Studies, and to the research on Hispanic, Asian, native American, and other

Third World religions,” should be addressed in a future book.3 Engaging Afro/black- Orientalism can be an

attempt to respond to his call for a future task that is not only interdisciplinary but also
cross-racial, cross-ethnicity, interreligious, and trans-Pacific. From another angle, engaging Afro/black-
Orientalism can open a way to encourage and advance the dialogue and interactions between African American and Asian/Asian Pacific North

American religious/theological studies. In this essay, I will first discuss some of the traces of Afro/black-Orientalism that illustrate its

heterogeneity in order to look at why it is significant to engage Afro/black-Orientalism. Each section is a brief examination, and is open for

further explorations. Second, I aim to articulate the significance and implications of engaging

Afro/black-Orientalism for doing interdisciplinary religious/theological studies from an

Asian Pacific North American feminist perspective. I take this essay as an opportunity to think about ways of
entering religious and theological discussions on issues such as white supremacy, postcolonialism, imperialism, and American nationalism and

national identity and to stimulate further work on these subject matters. Discussing “AfroAsian encounters” should encourage explorations of

Asian-Latino/a, Asian-Native, Afro-Asian-Latino/a, and Afro-Asian-Native connections, which may bear historically similar critiques of racism,

imperialism, and American nationalism.4 Afro/black-Orientalism and Its Traces Afro/black-Orientalism is a

heterogeneous discourse in its form, meaning, manifestation, and political as well as

discursive effect. Traces of Afro/black-Orientalism include, but are not limited to, 1)

nineteenth-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s efforts to connect the predicament of

African American workers to that of Asian laborers critiquing race-based exclusion in U.S.

immigration policy; 2) Zora Neale Hurston’s fierce critique of U. S. President Harry S.

Truman calling him the “Butcher of Asia” for supporting U.S. imperialist expansion

inAsia, by linking it to the lynching of blacks in the United States;5 3) Richard Wright’s

The Color Curtain, which launched the tradition of AfroAsian studies;6 and 4) the

National Association for Advancement of Colored People’s response to the internment of

Japanese Americans during World War II.7 Bill V. Mullen defines Afro-Orientalism as a

counterdiscourse that “at times shares with its dominant namesake certain features but

primarily constitutes an independent critical trajectory of thought on the practice and

ideological weight of Orientalism in the Western world.”8 Asian American studies scholar Helen H. Jun notes

that although black Orientalism has no singular meaning or manifestation, it encompasses “an entire range of black
imaginings of Asia that are in fact negotiations with the limits and disappointments of black

citizenship.”9 Whether it is limited to the discourse of black citizenship in relation to U.S. policy on Asian immigrants, or to the discourses

of antiracism and anti-imperialism, Afro/black- Orientalism, as Mullen puts it, is a “signifying discourse on

race, nation, and global politics constituting a subtradition in indigenous U.S. writing on

imperialism, colonialism, and the making of capitalist empire.”10 As such, Afro/black-Orientalism

acknowledges not only theproblems of Orientalism, Western imperialism, and capitalism

but also the extent to which such problems have affected African Americans, Asian

Americans, Africans, and Asians, sometimes in paralleled ways and sometimes through

different trajectories. Hence, Afro/black-Orientalism, as Jun puts it, is “not employed as an accusatory and reductive condemnation

that functions to chastise black individuals or institutions for being imperialist, racist, or Orientalist.”11 Rather, Afro/black-

Orientalism is employed as an important site where a crude opposition between blacks and

Asians can be contested, where the parallel courses of Western imperialism through Asia

and Africa can be explored, where the experiences of African Americans and Asian

Americans as slaves and indentured servants in the Americas, respectively, can be

compared, and where cross-racial, cross-ethnic, and trans-Pacific political solidarity that is not

based on racial identification can be sought out. Exploring instances of Afro/black-Orientalism in

various historical contexts illuminates not only the importance of race but also how crucial it is

to explore how gender, sexuality, and religion intersect with race and class in the face of ongoing

racism, sexism, heterosexism, militarism, and class exploitation.

[Mullen 3] AND, uniting the causes of anti-Blackness and anti-Asianess of being

individually deviant can rupture them respectively.

Mullen 3: Mullen. Bill [Bill V. Mullen is Professor of American Studies at Purdue and affiliate faculty to the Global Studies Program. His
specializations are American Literature and American Studies, African American Studies, Cultural Studies, Working-Class Studies, Critical Race
Theory and Marxist Theory.] “Afro-Orientalism” University of Minnesota press. AC
Ho’s revolutionary vision quest ultimately understands Afro-Asian collaboration as a

deconstructive tool for destroying racial, cultural, and geographic binaries undergirding

Orientalism and the Western meta- physic that is its foundation and platform. At the level of

practice, Ho’s Afro-Asian Multicultural Music provides an aesthetic third way beyond the

limits of both Euro-centered commercial ideas of world music and liberal

multiculturalism’s strategies of cultural containment—Ho refers to this as a journey “beyond” both East and
West. New Afro-Asian Mul- ticultural Music is thus best understood as Ho’s sui generis genre for a new Third World proletarian

internationalism. At the same time, Ho’s savvy manipulations of contemporary commercial forms, from kung fu Wlms to comic books, offers a

decisively post-Bandung (but not post- modern) revision of prior models of revolutionary culture, from Soviet socialist realism to Yenan. Ho’s

dramatic operas and martial arts pro- ductions gleefully exploit the slapstick and anarchist spirit of fairy tales