The Antiracist Culture War and Its Disconnects: On Conventions, Deflections, and Alternative Idioms

Abstract

In the following, I relate recent work I’ve done on Asian Americans and Asian American Christianity to a political phenomenon I refer to as the “antiracist culture war.” While I foreground description and analysis of the culture war, the precarious presence of Asian Americans informs the article throughout, becoming explicit in its second half. From the precarity of their position, one can see how the culture war works and the fate it bestows to Asian Americans. The manner by which the culture war marginalizes Asian Americans exposes the warrior logic driving its operations. The antiracist culture war makes casualties of Asian Americans, bystanders conscripted into a war not of their making.