Racial Pyramidization: A Relational Analysis of Asian American and African American Women’s Hypersexualization and Its Implications for Cross-Racial Solidarity
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Date
2022-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
This paper examines the historical underpinnings and violent reifications of the hypersexualization of Asian American and African American women under a relational framework of analysis. I specifically focus on the forces of imperialism, militarism, colonialism, slavery, and violence in forging such mythologies and argue that such processes are mutually constitutive under the white supremacist apparatus and, thereby, inform the positionality of racial groups from an intersectional perspective. In this paper, I offer a new theorization of Afro-Asian positionality, expanding Claire Jean Kim's model of racial triangulation of Asian Americans to take into account historical sexual domination as an additional dimension. Furthermore, I will argue that this renewed, intersectional understanding of racial positionality illuminates a basis of solidarity to effectively promote and strengthen the formation of Afro-Asian coalitions. By doing so, this project seeks to provide a relational, intersectional theory to congruously inform relational, intersectional activism.
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Keywords
hypersexualization, imperialism, racialization, afro-asian, racial triangulation