Anti-Asian Violence and Black-Asian Solidarity | Scott Kurashige Lunchtime talk

Lunch and a copy of Scott Kurashige's new book, American Peril, will be provided at the event.

The alarming rise in anti-Asian violence during the COVID-19 pandemic provoked a new wave of Asian American protests and media visibility. For hundreds of thousands of people, this was an awakening auguring new possibilities for social justice activism. Amid this promising development, a new round of interethnic tensions also arose, largely in response to sensational accounts of Asian Americans being attacked in public by Black assailants followed by criticism of Asian American advocates embracing policing and criminalization in a manner that invoked anti-Black racism.

This topic is especially relevant on May 19, the shared birthdays of Yuri Kochiyama, Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh. Drawing from his new book, American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism, Scott Kurashige will breakdown some of the most troubling incidents from the recent past and show how community organizers drew on a legacy of Black-Asian solidarity to offer non-carceral solutions that address the root causes of inequity and oppression.

Scott Kurashige serves as President and Literary Executor for the James and Grace Lee Boggs Foundation. He is the author or co-author of five books: The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles (Princeton University Press, 2008, recipient of AHA and AAAS book awards); The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century with Grace Lee Boggs (UC Press, 2011); The Fifty-Year Rebellion: How the U.S. Political Crisis Began in Detroit (UC Press, 2017) Exiled to Motown: A Community History of Japanese Americans in Detroit with the Detroit JACL History Project Committee (University of Washington Press, 2024), American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism (UC Press, 2026). A scholar of history, ethnic studies, and social movements, he has engaged in activism and community organizing in Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Seattle.

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