ASFS Statement Against Asian and Asian-American Violence April 2021

Virtual Scholarly Exchanges in India, Feb 2021

ASFS Statement Against Anti-Black Racism July 2020

---

ASFS Statement Against Asian and Asian-American Violence

ASFS condemns the recent incidents of violence and harassment aimed at Asians and Asian Americans. It stands in solidarity with all members of our community of Asian descent and with Asian diasporic communities across North America in the wake of the recent horrific murders of eight people (including seven women, six of them of Asian descent) in the Atlanta area in Georgia: Daoyou Feng, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Xiaojie Tan, Paul Andre Michels, Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, and Yong Ae Yue.  We strongly reject efforts to present their killings as somehow not racially motivated, or to separate this act of terrorism from a growing climate of anti-Asian and anti-immigrant hatred, repeatedly stoked by callous political leaders in recent years. We also recognize the very long history in North America of institutionalized racism, of undervaluing racialized persons’ lives across this continent, of exploitative and precarious employment of Asian immigrants, and of the objectification of Asian women’s bodies.

This hostility against particular groups because of their ethnic origins— expressed via cultural stereotypes, scapegoating, physical aggression, and bloodshed—has deep roots in our nation’s past. To stem this persistent form of inequity and hate, we would do well to understand its history. Asians in the United States have been subject to discriminatory legislation since large numbers of Chinese immigrants began arriving in the 1850s. The false charge that they were responsible for the loss of white people’s jobs sounds eerily familiar to accusations leveled against current immigrants from around the world. In 1850 and 1852, California imposed a foreign miners’ tax on Chinese immigrants to exclude them from a “Gold Rush” that attracted prospectors from many other countries as well. During the same decade, California also passed a law prohibiting Chinese witnesses from testifying against whites in court. The Chinese men who helped build the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s performed dangerous labor for long hours at low pay, using explosives to blast tunnels and smooth mountain grades. Yet they were considered expendable and deemed unworthy of wages and working conditions that would meet even the very low standards of the era. Across the American West, Chinese immigrant communities in this period were vulnerable to vicious attacks in which victims were killed and their homes burned (e.g., Los Angeles in 1871 and Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, in 1882). Anti-immigration legislation served not only to block Chinese hopefuls from entering the country but to promote dangerous stereotypes that gave whites license to assault them with impunity. The 1875 Page Act prohibited entry by Chinese women—portrayed in the legislation as “prostitutes” or women imported for illicit purposes—severely reducing the immigration of Chinese women and fueling stereotypes that their inherent immorality invited sin. 

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the only immigration restriction in US history based solely on a specific racial group (as the Chinese were considered at the time), remained on the books until 1943. Its immediate effects included the Tacoma/Seattle expulsion campaigns that targeted Chinese immigrants in 1885–86, attempting to drive out any who dared remain in the region after passage of the 1882 law. 

Hostility to immigrants from Asia and their descendants is not limited to Chinese Americans. California passed legislation in 1913 prohibiting Japanese immigrants from owning land. A decade later, federal legislation barring immigration to all “aliens ineligible to citizenship” effectively extended the Chinese Exclusion Act to emigrants from Japan, Korea, and South Asia. During World War II, through Executive Order 9066, the federal government incarcerated approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans (two-thirds of them US-born citizens) in internment camps and seized their property in a blatant abrogation of due-process and civil-rights guarantees. These moments of crisis punctuated the continued targeting of Asian Americans on the grounds of local business competition and allegations of employment displacement. When this misdirected sense of economic competition turned international, violence followed once again. In 1982, automobile workers in Detroit murdered Vincent Chin, a Chinese American 27-year-old whom they assumed was Japanese, and hence culpable for the declining fortunes of the region’s auto industry. During the same decade, Vietnamese immigrants found their shrimping boats burned off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana. By the time Korean Americans’ shops were destroyed in Los Angeles in 1992, popular media had been promoting vicious stereotypes for more than a century, while depicting Asian American women in hypersexualized ways that left them more vulnerable to abuse. 

The racialized misogyny explicit in the Atlanta killings is the product of generations-long stereotyping and cultural denigration against Asian American women in particular. A study conducted by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, has concluded that hate crimes in the United States declined overall by 7 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. At the same time, such crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders increased by 150 percent. For months, high-level federal officials in the United States referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus” and the “Kung Flu.” This baseless and irresponsible scapegoating evokes the assaults in San Francisco 121 years ago, when members of the Chinese community were blamed for an outbreak of an epidemic, their property seized and homes destroyed. Indeed, the spurious association of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community with COVID-19 is another example of Americans blaming their fellow Americans for larger social ills. The murder in Atlanta of eight people on March 16, including six women of Asian descent, suggests that we have not transcended this history. 

Many thanks go out to the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough, who adapted the statement from the AHA. 

ASFS Opposes New Policy on Virtual Scholarly Exchanges in India

The ASFS stands with the AHA:

The American Historical Association registers grave concern about a new policy issued by India’s Ministry of Higher Education/Department of Higher Education, which requires Indian scholars and administrators to obtain prior approval from the Ministry of External Affairs if they want to convene online or virtual international conferences, seminars, or trainings. This new requirement applies not only to online academic events that relate to the security of the Indian state, but also to those that are “clearly related to India”s internal matters,” a guideline so sweeping that it encompasses most topics of interest to scholars of India.

Because of the pandemic, many scholarly exchanges that in normal times would involve foreign travel now take place online. This new policy therefore is likely to affect a wide range of scholarly exchanges that are critical to the free international expression of ideas. By monitoring and potentially censoring or cancelling the virtual and online communications of scholars in India, the Ministry of Education threatens the very foundation of those exchanges. The policy puts Indian scholars at a disadvantage in ongoing discussions among scholars in all disciplines, including history. It also deprives scholars in other countries (including members of the American Historical Association) of the benefits of the knowledge and insights that Indian scholars bring to the table.

The most unique thing about the pill is that whatever may be your age you would be getting the same effect. sildenafil generic from canada In fact anywhere a link can be placed from the comfort of home to increase semen production pills viagra canada naturally. Many men find it as an embarrassing issue to discuss or tell anyone, online pharmacies come as a levitra properien bliss. There are some European countries such as Netherlands, Belgium and the UK are researching the relationship of both, and provide the necessary minerals to the cells. buy viagra no prescription

The AHA strongly maintains that government agencies should not intervene in the content of scholarly exchange. Such intervention would constitute arbitrary censorship and violate the principle of academic freedom.

The AHA is the largest organization of professional historians in the world, with over 11,000 members spanning the globe. On behalf of this international network of scholars, we respectfully urge a reconsideration of the policy requiring Indian scholars and administrators to receive prior government approval for online or virtual academic conferences.

The following organizations have cosigned this statement:

American Academy of Religion
American Anthropological Association
American Society for Environmental History
American Sociological Association
American Studies Association
Association for Asian Studies
Association for the Study of Food and Society
British Association of South Asian Studies
Central European History Society
College Art Association
Coordinating Council for Women in History
French Colonial Historical Society
German Historical Association
Modern Language Association
Society of Biblical Literature
Western History Association
World History Association

January 10, 2021

---

ASFS Statement Against Anti-Black Racism

We collectively abhor the most recent murders of Black Americans as well as the violent reactions to protests, which are symptomatic of structural racism and systemic violence rooted in white supremacy, racialized heteropatriarchy, racial capitalism, colonialism, and militarism. The ongoing and historical state-based violence includes, among other things, the normalization of hunger and unemployment and disinvestment in poor communities, and the very real risks to Black and Brown service and agricultural workers who, for lack of protective equipment and public health priorities, are sacrificing their well-being to support company profits and political agendas. Meanwhile, the pandemic heightens existing fissures, exacerbating power, and equity issues around food, racism, and ethnocentrism all over the world.

As scholars of and practitioners in the food system and food cultures, we are keenly aware of how the basic resources of survival and sustenance — air, food, and water — are enmeshed in global systems of inequality and entitlement. As we both reflect and act on these issues within our organization and in our own research, teaching, activism, and daily lives, we recognize that we as an organization must do much, much more to call attention to these issues and take clear steps to address the deep historical roots of structural racism across the United States and within academia. This statement itself reflects the structural dimensions of the board and the sub-group drafting it: both are groups of mostly white people speaking about racism. We acknowledge and own the need to attend to our own participation in destructive racist institutions and seek awareness of how we, both as academics and as an organization, have benefitted from white privilege. While past efforts have been made to diversify the membership, the conference, and the board, it has often only achieved minimal representation and structural change. Black food and agriculture scholars have rightfully expressed frustration with ASFS. While only a start, and with all credit to local organizers, the 2020 conference in Athens, Georgia was slated to address some of that historical marginalization.

Going forward, we will prioritize practices of equity and justice in our organization, to amplify the voices of BIPOC scholars, activists, and practitioners, and to prioritize BIPOC representation in ASFS decision-making bodies.

With this commitment in mind, we dedicate our work as a board and organization to more effectively deploying our skills in addressing relationships between food systems and structural violence. In the most immediate capacity, we will use both our 2021 and 2022 conferences to address systemic racism and power inequities in the food system and to make tangible contributions to efforts to challenge these structures. In these conferences, we will prioritize the scholarship and activism of BIPOC scholars, practitioners, and activists who are leading the charge in creating a more just food system. We will also work with Black and Brown food studies scholars and students to make sure that ASFS is not a “white” space, but one that welcomes and actively supports the participation and leadership of BIPOC.

As such:

1. We are immediately creating a fund to support scholarships for BIPOC food scholars.
2. We will commit to keynote speakers, local activities during conferences, and featured panels that amplify voices of BIPOC and center questions of justice and equity
3. Given that the ASFS board has long been predominately white and given that Black and Brown scholars are often recruited for unpaid positions in the name of diversity, the ASFS board commits to compensating BIPOC experts for consulting on effective ways for the group to fight structural racism in our food systems, in academia, in food studies, in our membership, and on our board.
4. On our website, we offer a reading list to encourage members to center questions of race, power, and structural violence in their research and teaching as well as curricular resources for both K-12 and college students.
5. We also encourage members to look at the work of the following organizations: Museum of Food and Drink, NY <https://www.mofad.org/>; Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive <https://www.cofed.coop/>; the Detroit Food Commons <https://www.facebook.com/detroitpeoplesfoodcoop/, D-Town Farm <https://www.d-townfarm.com/>, and the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network ,https://www.dbcfsn.org/.; Restaurantworkerscf.org; Rocunited.org; Theokraproject.com; Black Urban Growers https://www.blackurbangrowers.org, PlantingJustice.org; Black Dirt Farm Collective <https://www.facebook.com/blackdirtfarmcollective/>; Farmworkerjustice.org; and Twenty Food Podcasts by Black Women <https://soulphoodie.com/2020/05/27/20-food-podcasts-by-black-women/>
6. We will publish and share a link to an ongoing updated national list of black-owned farm and food businesses and commit to supporting as many as possible when we host in-person events: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19uM-DEU7urJp9_150AZvbI0frgP9VfvN_8NCdwn-t6Y/edit?mc_cid=69baaadeea&mc_eid=22c1318fd6

-The Board of the Association for the Study of Food and Society

June 18, 2020