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Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and the Prison Industrial Complex by Raymond Magsaysay

“Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and the Prison Industrial Complex” by Raymond Magsaysay

Date Written: February 24, 2021

Abstract: Recent uprisings against racial injustice, sparked by the killings of George Floyd and others, have triggered urgent calls to overhaul the U.S. criminal “justice” system. Yet Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, the fastest-growing group in the country, have largely been left out of these conversations. Identifying and addressing this issue, I intercalate AAPIs into powerful, contemporary critiques of the prison industrial complex, including emergent abolitionist legal scholarship. I argue that the model minority myth, an anti-Black racial project, leads to the exclusion of AAPIs in both mainstream and critical studies of crime and carcerality. I begin the intervention by critiquing the lacuna that exists within Asian American Jurisprudence, specifically the erasure of criminalized AAPIs’ voices and experiences. I then demonstrate that AAPIs are caught in the carceral web of mass incarceration by highlighting the lived experiences of AAPI youth with the school-to-prison pipeline, in addition to excavating the minimal publicly available data on AAPI prison populations. Adopting multidisciplinary and multimodal methods, I identify and analyze distinct forms of racial profiling and racialized bullying that drive AAPI students out of schools and into prisons. I pay specific attention to the criminalization of various subgroups under the “AAPI” umbrella as whiz kids, gang members, or terrorists. In uncovering previously unexamined dimensions of the criminal system, I stress how the exclusion of AAPIs in critical discourse obscures the actual scale of the carceral state, erases complex intra- and interracial dynamics of power, marginalizes criminalized AAPIs, and concurrently reinforces anti-Blackness and other toxic ideologies. The Article therefore reaffirms Critical Race, intersectional, and abolitionist analyses of race and criminalization. It also directly links Asian American Jurisprudence to on-going abolitionist critiques of the prison industrial complex. I conclude with a proffer of abolitionist-informed solutions to the school-to-prison pipeline as well as a call, particularly to AAPI communities, for fiercer and more meaningful coalition-building.

Keywords: school to prison pipeline, intersectionality, prison reform, criminal justice, pacific islander, abolition, critical race, asian american, aapi, prison industrial complex

Read and download the full paper here

 

 

 

Guide to Counter-Narrating the Attacks on Critical Race Theory

“Essential conversations about race in America are being hijacked and curtailed by broad narrative attacks launched by Christopher Rufo, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. The attacks by Rufo and other critics, pundits, and politicians who have joined the effort are shutting down critical racial equity work and conversations in institutions across the country—primarily schools, universities, and government—and are extending further into our society.

Download this guide to craft your response to attacks on racial equity training, whether you are a parent, activist, or government worker.

Contact Race Forward at [email protected] if you want to work with Race Forward’s team to develop (and potentially pitch) your story in support of education and training on systemic racism.”

Oakland Unified School District Lesson Plan Ideas

To decrease bullying and prevent incidents of anti-Asian discrimination, educators and families can play a critical role in helping young people understand the history and context for anti-Asian racism in the United States and around the world that has flared up due to COVID-19 first known in China.

See Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell’s statements on anti-Asian violence:

Here are some resources and ideas for lesson plans we’ve compiled to use with your students:

Curriculum Resource Guide for Elementary Schools

Curriculum Resource Guide for Middle & High Schools

Please share any additional resources that should be included by emailing [email protected] or commenting on the document!

 

 

 

 

 

Learning for Justice

A project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Learning for Justice is a curated a collection of resources for teachers. 

From film kits and lesson plans to the building blocks of a customized Learning Plan—texts, student tasks and teaching strategies—these resources will help you bring relevance, rigor and social emotional learning into your classroom—all for FREE.

Not sure where to begin? Get to know the Social Justice Standards, anchor standards and age-appropriate learning outcomes divided into four domains—Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action. The Standards provide a common language and a road map for anti-bias education at every grade level.

 

Our Bodies, Our Stories Podcast

Within the Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities, conversations surrounding Reproductive Justice tend to be silenced or overlooked. The “Our Bodies, Our Stories” podcast series is an intentional space created by VAYLA New Orleans for us to explore conversations about anything and everything as it pertains to a reproductive justice framework using an AAPI lens and our cultural understanding.

 

 

Justice For Muslims Collective (JMC) Civic Engagement Campaign

Dear Community,

We are less than a week away from one of the most important elections of our lifetime. Today, we are thrilled to launch our JMC election brief called, We Count: Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian (AMEMSA) Voters in Virginia. The brief gives an overview of our civic engagement campaign to call 65,000 AMEMSA voters in Virginia, our findings from a survey we conducted with low-propensity working-class voters in Northern Virginia, community reflections on civic engagement campaigns, and resources. Read the full brief here and share it! 

Overall we found from a survey with 176 voters that:

  • The overwhelming majority of AMEMSA registered voters who took our survey stated a strong yes (86%) to voting in November. A small minority (3%) stated a strong no to voting during this election.

  • Issue Areas and Priorities: The two leading issues our respondents wanted the next President to prioritize were fighting racism and Islamophobia (40%) and expanding access to affordable healthcare (36%).

  • Public Health: The top two public health issues that voters wanted to be addressed were COVID19 (52%) and expanding access to affordable healthcare (39%).

  • Public Safety: The top 3 public safety issues that voters wanted to be addressed were hate crimes against people of color (38%)and police accountability and reform (36%). In addition, 17 percent of voters who took our survey stated government surveillance of mosques and Muslim communities was their number one public safety issue they wanted to be addressed.