About this event: The coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, has impacted thousands around the world. Between the histories of xenophobic racism; medical experimentation and surveillance; prejudice in (and out) of the public health system; the violence of white capitalist heteronormative patriarchal supremacy and more, Black and Asian-American communities are disproportionately experiencing the detrimental impacts of the virus. In New York and across the nation, there is an increase of xenophobic racism and violence against Asian-Americans. Reports have shown that in states and cities such as Louisiana, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Michigan that the majority of those who are infected and dying from the coronavirus are Black.

While there are well-documented tensions between Black and Asian-American communities, there is an equally long history of Black and Asian solidarities and community building both in the United States and abroad. How can Asian-American feminists and Black feminists engage in a critical dialogue on the impacts of COVID-19 in their respective communities? What can we learn from the long history of solidarity between Black and Asian-American feminists? More importantly, how can we continue to create transnational Black and Asian feminist solidarities in the United States and beyond?

Black Women Radicals and the Asian-American Feminist Collective had a critical discussion on these topics in efforts to continue to build cross-racial feminist solidarities.

Panelists from the Asian-American Feminist Collective included: Rachel Kuo (@_kuolabear), Salonee Bhaman (@salonee), Tiffany Diane Tso (@tiffanydian), Julie Kim (@jakets), Senti Sojwal (@senti_naro). Below is the reading list from the event!

Why is it important for us as radical feminists to look back at our formidable history of cross-racial solidarities and movement building?

• How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

• “Learning from the 60s” by Audre Lorde (1982)

• Black Women’s Manifesto by the Third World Women’s Alliance

• Azalea: A Magazine by Third World Lesbians (Journal)

• A Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, a feminist anthology edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa

• Living for Change: An Autobiography, Grace Lee Boggs

Historical Solidarities and Organizing Between Black and Asian Feminists

Conferences, Organizations, Statements, and Journals

• The Conference of the Women of Asia (1949).

• The Bandung Conference (also known as the Afro-Asian Conference) (1955).

• The Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Conference (1957).

• The Afro-Asian Women’s Conference in Cairo, Egypt (1961).

• The Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation (AAPSO).

• The Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee (SKSSAA).

• The First Afro-Asian-Latin American Peoples’ Solidarity Conference in Havana, Cuba (1966).

• Audre Lorde traveling to Auckland, New Zealand to build solidarities between Maori and Pacific Island women.

• “Mountains That Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama: A Conversation on Life, Struggles, and Liberation” (A Documentary).

• The Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD).

• The Blasian Project

How are we seeing anti-Blackness perpetuated in Asian-American communities right now? How are we seeing this tied to a historical and systematic thread? How can Asian people address anti-Blackness? How do we move past hurt in order to build together?

• Nail Salon Brawls & Boycotts: Unpacking The Black-Asian Conflict In America by Tiffany Diane Tso for Refinery29

• Organizing in Communities of Color: Addressing Inter-Ethnic Conflicts by Margo Okazawa-Rey and Marshall Wong. 

• Mari J. Matsuda, 1996,  “We Will Not Be Used: Are Asian Americans the Racial Bourgeoisie?”

• Introduction: Feminist and Queer Afro Asian Formations by Vanita Reddy and Anantha Sudhakar

• Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections between African Americans and Asian Americans, edited by Fred Ho and Bill V. Mullen

• Afro-Asian Connections in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Luisa Marcela Ossa and Debbie Lee DiStefano

• Soya Jung (2014) What a Model Minority Mutiny Demands

• Annie Tan (2016) Peter Liang Was Justly Convicted , He’s Not a Victim, Says the Niece of Vincent Chin

• Tamara K. Nopper (2015) On Terror, Captivity, and Black-Korean Conflict

How have historical and current racial and economic disparities in general and the lack of public health and access to healthcare specifically exacerbate the oppressive and fatal encounters of COVID-19? What’s important about historical specificity?  

• “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” Cathy J. Cohen / A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies MAY 01 1997

• Killing The Black Body, by Dorothy Roberts (1998)

• The Pedagogy of Pathologization: Dis/abled Girls of Color in the School-Prison Nexus by Subini Annamma

• Salonee Bhaman, 2020, “Who is the Village For? The Troubled History of the Northern Dispensary”

• Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington

What are you seeing on the ground and from community groups around COVID? How can feminist politics be used in our analysis of COVID-19?

• “Grassroots Leadership and Afro-Asian Solidarities: Yuri Kochiyama’s Humanizing Radicalism” by Diane C. Fujino, essay in the book, Want to Start A Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle, edited by Dayo F. Gore, Jeanne Theoharis,and Komozi Woodard.

• Activist Scholarship: Antiracism, Feminism, and Social Change by Julia Chinyere Oparah, Julia Sudbury, and Margo Okazawa-Rey.

• Asian American Feminist Collective, Care in the Time of Coronavirus

What are ways to continue to build Black and Asian-American feminist solidarities? 

• IDSEM 2029: Black Power, Yellow Peril: Towards a Politics of Afro-Asian Solidarity by Diane Wong (Syllabus).

• Afro-Asia Working Group by Tao Leigh Goffe

• Peggy Saika and Loretta Ross, Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Interview Transcript, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.

• “Historical Readings on #BlackAsian Solidarity” by Keisha N. Blain for Black Perspectives

• “The Deep Roots of Afro-Asia” by Keisha N. Blain for Black Perspectives

• “‘On Transpacific Antiracism: An Interview with Yuichiro Onishi” by Keisha N. Blain for Black Perspectives

• “The Illusion of Afro-Asian Solidarity?: Situating the 1955 Bandung Conference” by Tamara Nopper for Black Perspectives

• “Afro-Asian Lens on the Past” by Crystal Anderson for Black Perspectives

• “The Secret History of South Asian and African American Solidarity“

• “Speaking” Subalterns: A Comparative Study of African American and Dalit/Indian Literatures” by Mantra Roy