Ethnic Studies

In this moment of heightened political repression, racial retrenchment, and global anti-Blackness, the urgency of confronting anti-Blackness within, through, and across communities of color has never been greater. As book bans spread, Critical Race Theory (CRT) is vilified, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are dismantled, we must reckon with the reality that anti-Blackness is not an aberration, but an organizing logic of racial formation and global white supremacy. This edited volume brings together scholars, educators, and community organizers to interrogate the ways anti-Blackness is perpetuated within / through / across Latinx and Asian American communities—and the complex, often contradictory practices of complicity, resistance, and solidarity that emerge in response. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from disciplines / professions like education, ethnic studies, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, social work, and gender studies, Asian and Latinx Anti-Blackness in Schools and Communities: Complicated Stories of Complicity and Resistance refuses simplistic narratives that position non-Black communities of color solely as victims or solely as perpetrators. Instead, contributors adopt a both/and framework, naming the ways Latinx and Asian communities have benefited from proximity to whiteness (as it relates to anti-Blackness) while also highlighting the histories, ruptures, and refusals that open / reveal possibilities for coalition and collective liberation. Organized into three sections—Anti-Blackness With/In, Through, and Among Latinx & Asian Communities, Geographies and Spaces; Anti-Blackness in Latinx & Asian Teaching, Pedagogy, and Curriculum; and Anti-Blackness and the Precarity of Racial Categories—the chapters combine empirical research, conceptual essays, narrative, and autoethnographies. Together, they explore topics such as racial formation, racial hierarchy, racial triangulation, the intersections of Blackness, the policing of language and accent, and the lived experiences of multiracial individuals navigating contested racial boundaries. The book situates these discussions within the shifting demographic and political landscape of the United States, where the 2020 Census revealed a decline in the white population alongside an increase in racial diversity, and where Kamala Harris’s historic tenure as the first Black and Asian American Vice President (and presidential candidate) illuminated both the promise of representation and the persistence of racial hierarchy. These contexts underscore a central question animating the volume: How do Latinx and Asian communities—within schools, neighborhoods, and transnational networks—navigate the tensions between inclusion and erasure of Blackness in the broader racial imaginary? Ultimately, this volume is both critique and invitation. It challenges readers to: confront how anti-Blackness is reproduced in everyday practices and institutional structures; to reckon with the privileges and harms tied to racialized positioning; and to imagine relational, historical, and spatial practices of accountability within / through / and among Latinx and Asian communities. By centering the voices of scholars and storytellers committed to racial justice, Asian and Latinx Anti-Blackness in Schools and Communities offers not only a sharper understanding of racial dynamics beyond the Black–white binary, the impact of the binary, but also concrete pathways toward dismantling anti-Blackness and building enduring, justice-oriented solidarity.

The first wave of Black immigrants arrived in North America during the 1960s and 1970s, coming originally from the Caribbean. An opportunity was missed, however, in documenting their everyday experience from a social science perspective: what did it mean for a Barbadian or a Jamaican to live in Toronto or New York? Were they Jamaicans or did they go with the descriptor ‘Black’? What relationship did they have with African Canadians or African Americans? Black Immigrants in North America answers these and other questions while documenting the second wave of Black immigration to North America, which started in the early 1990s. Theoretically and empirically grounded, the book is a documentation of the process of becoming Black – a radical identity transformation where a continental African is marked by Blackness. This, in turn, leads to a deeper understanding of what it means to encounter that social imaginary of, ‘Oh, they all look like Blacks to me!’ This encounter impacts what one learns and how one learns it, where learning English as a Second Language (ESL) is sidestepped in favor of Black English as a Second Language (BESL). Learning becomes a political and a pedagogical project of cultural, linguistic and identity investment and desire.Perfect for courses such as: Black Immigrants, Race Complexity, Critical Applied Linguistics, Ethnography, Graduate Course on Educational Foundations and Curriculum

Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance is an excellent text for use in a variety of upper-division undergraduate and graduate classrooms. It is also a valuable addition to the libraries of writers and researchers interested in indigenous studies and decolonialism.