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Why Xenophobia?
No full textXenophobia is deeply entwined with racism but nevertheless maintains a life of its own. Focusing on the structural drivers of xenophobia in the United States, this essay asks what xenophobia accomplishes that racism alone does not. It posits that while xenophobia serves many purposes, one of its most significant functions is to legitimize the very existence of the settler colonial state. Beyond that, it empowers the state by (1) galvanizing a national response that can counteract the internal divisions promoted by racialization, (2) sanctioning the use of raw power against racialized Others in ways not otherwise considered acceptable, (3) facilitating the construction of enemies more sophisticated than racism usually permits, and (4) diverting attention from the real costs and consequences of empire. By reinforcing state structures in these ways, xenophobia may further the interests not only of those who envision the United States as an explicitly racial project but also those who strive for an assimilationist, post-racial future
Prohibiting Cashless Retailers and Protecting the Impoverished
Get PDFA growing number of customer-facing businesses have opted to implement cashless policies, declining to accept cash for payment and limiting consumers’ options on how they can pay for goods and services. Proponents for cashless policies cite the efficiencies gained by removing cash from a business and concerns about theft as their primary reasons for supporting such policies. Opponents to the move toward cashless express concerns that the policy is discriminatory and has a disparate impact on lower-income consumers who do not have access to financial institutions. Policymakers at the local and state levels have responded by proposing and enacting legislation prohibiting discrimination against cash buyers.
This Note examines the controversy regarding cashless policies and the appropriate government response to this practice. This Note argues that the U.S. Supreme Court should classify poverty as a suspect class and apply strict scrutiny to any legislation that impacts a low-income person’s ability to participate in the marketplace freely. Additionally, this Note argues that Congress should enact federal legislation to prohibit businesses from implementing cashless policies because the policies discriminate against those who do not have access to financial services
Racial Triangulation, Interest-Convergence, and the Double-Consciousness of Asian Americans
Get PDFThis Essay integrates Professor Claire Jean Kim’s racial triangulation framework, Professor Derrick Bell’s interest-convergence theory, and W.E.B. Du Bois’s notion of double-consciousness, all to examine the racial positioning of Asian Americans and the dilemmas we face as a result. To do so, this Essay considers the history of Asian immigration to the United States, the model minority and perpetual foreigner stereotypes, Asian Americans’ positioning in the affirmative action debate, COVID-19-related hate and bias incidents, and Andrew Yang’s 2020 Democratic presidential candidacy. The Essay examines how racial stereotypes of Asian Americans have emerged through historical cycles of valorization and ostracism, as analyzed through the racial triangulation framework. It analyzes how the political interests of the U.S. government converged with those of educated professionals in Asian countries, leading to changes in immigration policy and the emergence of the model minority stereotype. The Essay considers various ways that Asian Americans have been simultaneously valorized as model minorities and ostracized as perpetual foreigners. It highlights the affirmative action debate, where Asian Americans have been cast as high-achieving victims of race-conscious university admissions policies and pitted against other groups of people of color, culminating with the current Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President of Harvard College lawsuit. Finally, the Essay focuses on Andrew Yang’s presidential bid—particularly how his navigation of racial stereotypes reflected a double-consciousness that parallels the dilemmas faced by many Black Americans. The Essay concludes by arguing that to build coalitions and work toward racial justice, Asian Americans, Black Americans, and other people of color need to recognize our own double-consciousness and also see how it relates to the double-consciousness experienced by others
Against Discourse: Why Eliminating Racial Disparities Requires Radical Politics, Not More Discussion
No full textRacial disparity discourse is one of the main modalities through which we discuss and experience race and racism in the United States today--in discussions with colleagues and friends, in scholarly work, on cable news, on social media, and in lecture halls. Despite its ubiquity, racial disparity discourse is under-theorized: what, exactly, is its intended purpose? This Essay argues that most discussion about racial disparities is predicated on the faulty premise--grounded in the Habermasian concepts of discourse and communicative rationality--that antiracists will convince their interlocutors by engaging in a practice of rationalistic discourse among participants who share the objective and expectation of consensus. Drawing on the work of political philosopher Charles Mills and sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Moon-Kie Jung, the Essay explains why the pragmatic conditions of possibility for discourse of this sort concerning matters related to race in the United States are frequently absent. Specifically, Mills theorizes that a “racial contract,” saturated with racialized hierarchies and subordinating logics, has always underwritten the American social contract, leaving in its wake an “epistemology of ignorance” that is today responsible for localized and global cognitive dysfunctions. Jung develops Bourdieu\u27s concept of doxa to explain how, when it comes to the politics of race in the *1178 United States, individual agency and actions are always mediated by a classificatory, schematic, and hierarchical social structure in which race frequently plays a decisive organizing role. This Essay concludes by recommending that those committed to redressing vulnerability, precarity, and disposability along racialized lines should not focus their efforts on cobbling together a transracial coalition of the discursively convinced. Instead, it is argued that attentional and financial resources are better directed to develop and reinvigorate a radical, oppositional politics dedicated to eradicating racialized hierarchies and those elements of the political economy that reciprocally nurture and feed off them. Political theorist Chantal Mouffe\u27s model of “agonistic pluralism,” which centers the irreducibly conflictual nature of modern politics and proposes a politics that aims to confront and convert rather than to convince, is offered as a fruitful theoretical model to underwrite this non-discursive, radical politics
Spring et al., v. McMillin et al., Order Denying Plaintiffs\u27 Emergency Motion for Injunctive Relief
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COVID-19: A Call for Legal and Institutional Reform
Get PDFCOVID-19 has caused an unprecedented health crisis in the United States and the world. The article calls for legal and institutional reform to better manage present and future pandemics