David H. Kim, "U.S. Imperialism and Asian American Racialization"
Channel: Center for Global Ethics and Politics
Date: 2023-06-20

David H. Kim, University of San Francisco

Center for Global Ethics and Politics on February 16, 2023
Co-sponsored with CUNY Minorities and Philosophy

U.S. Imperialism and Asian American Racialization

Considerable interest has been focused on immigration and national identity, and the resulting discourse on borders and their traversal has been heavily racialized. Philosophy of race has produced helpful explanations and critiques of relevant aspects of racial stratification. But there is another important type of border action and discourse, also heavily racialized, and it has been comparatively undertheorized in philosophy of race. It concerns the boundary of national sovereignty itself moving well beyond immigration walls and crossing the borders of other nation-states—what we call “imperialism.” In this paper, I discuss imperialistic racial formation, specifically 20 th century U.S. imperialism as a form of Amerasian (Latin American and broadly East Asian) domination and, as such, an important source of the racial stratification of Asian Americans. The paper emphasizes the importance of racial and regional specificity and hegemonic variety in understanding U.S. imperialism, elements that are frequently obscured in philosophical treatments of this theme, which tend to use patchwork Euro-focused portraits of empire or exclusively materialist analyses.

The Center for Global Ethics and Politics is part of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY.