Reckoning with Anti-Asian Violence: Racial Grief, Visionary Organizing, and Educational Responsibility

Abstract

This commentary is an edited transcription of a historic and dynamic discussion on “Reckoning with Anti-Asian Violence” among a distinguished panel of elected legislators, community leaders, and academic researchers. This discussion took place virtually as a presidential session during the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association on April 11, 2021, in response to the increasing attention as well as escalating fear due to anti-Asian racism and violence in the United States and globally, including the mass shooting in Atlanta on March 16, 2021. Over 100 attendees across the United States and internationally bore witness to this important yet rare convening of high-profile Asian American female politicians, organizers, and scholars. Many recognized the historic significance of this topic and gathering and asked for its documentation. As session organizers and panelists, we offer this commentary for our communities as part of a national and global archive of the current state of affairs.

Disclosure statement

The session organizers are Roland Sintos Coloma, Betina Hsieh, and OiYan Poon. Coloma is a professor of Teacher Education at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Hsieh is an associate professor of Teacher Education at California State University, Long Beach, and is chair of the Research on the Education of Asian and Pacific Americans (REAPA) special interest group in the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Poon is a Program Officer at the Spencer Foundation, based in Chicago, Illinois.

The distinguished panel consists of elected legislators, national leaders, and prominent academics—Stephanie Chang, Sung Yeon Choimorrow, Manjusha P. Kulkarni, Grace Meng, Leigh Patel, and Allyson Tintiango-Cubales. State Senator Chang, representing the first district of Michigan, is the Senate’s Minority Floor Leader, and is the first Asian American woman to be elected to the state legislature. Choimorrow is the executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, based in Chicago, Illinois. Kulkarni is the executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, based in Los Angeles, California, and is one of the leads of the Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center. Congresswoman Meng, representing the sixth district of New York, is the first Asian American to be elected to the U.S. Congress from the state of New York, and is the first vice chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. Patel is a professor of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. Tintiangco-Cubales is a professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University in northern California.

Coloma, Hsieh, and Poon would like to thank AERA, especially executive director Felice Levine and president Shaun Harper, for supporting this session when it was initially proposed after the heinous Atlanta shootings and for elevating it as a presidential session. The session is co-sponsored by AERA Division B (Curriculum Studies), Division G (Social Context of Education), and the REAPA special interest group. They would also like to thank the Educational Studies journal editors Ming Fang He and Bic Ngo for recognizing the significance of this high-profile discussion and for publishing this Commentary.