We know that Asian Americans, like other non-white racial groups, have been victims of violence directed towards them. Not too long ago, we witnessed and experienced a period of widespread Asian hate, which was induced by President Donald Trump when he continually called the Covid 19 virus the “Chinese virus.” It seemed like the violence against Asians in America comes and goes depending on economic conditions, international relations, and social conditions.
Now, with the publication of American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism authored by Scott Kurashige we know much more about anti-Asian violence. Kurashige, a scholar and community activist, has written a comprehensive and systematic study of anti-Asian violence and what can be done about it. Thanks to Kurashige, we know the frequency, causes, measures taken to address violence against Asians, and how the Asian community has and can mobilize to deal with such violence.
Part One of the book covers the period from the 1850s to 1970s, centered on “How America Erased the Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism.” Here, Kurashige, traces anti-Asian violence back to the anti-Chinese movement which entailed widespread riots and killings and exploitation of Chinese immigrants. This violence, he noted, went hand in hand with Chinese exclusion. Moreover, the violence was partly a result of Manifest Destiny: the belief that white Americans were best suited and chosen by God to develop the American West. Relating this violence to the events in China, Kurashige notes that the Chinese exclusion stems from the British imperialism in China, which began with the Opium War, and solidified by unjust treaties that allowed western countries, including the U.S, obtain extra-territorial occupancy at a number of China’s main ports.
As America embarked on imperialism, it bought violence and mass murder overseas. Manifest Destiny, Kurashige observed, was driven by the conquest over Mexico and Native American nations, and on display in the 20th century when American military might pivoted to Asia and the Pacific. For examples, he referred to the Korean War of 1871 and the Philippine-American War which resulted in significant violence and killings, the history of which is too often erased. U.S. imperialism also led to on-going atrocities in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, much of which was, according to Kurashige, also erased or otherwise rationalized, minimized or explained away.
Kurashige provides ample evidence that anti-Asian violence is not a series of isolated, random acts; it is a recurring pattern at the heart of American history and capitalism. When the U.S. faces economic instability, labor conflict, war or geopolitical competition, Asian communities are often cast as expendable or suspect.
One of the central themes of American Peril is the fact that American attitudes towards any or all Asian Americans are closely related to America’s foreign relationship with any Asian country. Indeed, Kurashige details many incidences of this connection between domestic and foreign relations with an Asian country. In references to the U.S. war against Japan and the incarceration of Japanese Americans, Kurashige recalls the testimony of Earl Warren, then California’s Attorney General, regarding Executive Order 9066, which led to the mass incarceration of Japanese in WWII. Warren, who would become the head of the U.S. Supreme Court, testified in support of the Executive Order because he was convinced that Japanese Americans would engage in espionage and commit sabotage.
The unjust incarceration of the Japanese, Kurashige asserts, was an extension of the exclusion movement that originated with the anti-Chinese experience. According to Kurashige, “It demonstrates how anti-Asian racism and violence operated in a transnational manner for Korean and South Asian Americans.” Moreover, atrocities by Japan during WWII were combined with the belief that the “…Japanese race was unmatched in its savagery and uniquely prone to war crimes.” This belief, wrote Kurashige, led to the mass slaughter of Japanese civilians that was justifiable and an acceptable measure to “save lives and preserve civilization.” Consequently, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The book includes a chapter on the “Sexual objectification of Asian women” which Kurashige notes, can be traced back to the conscription of prostitutes to serve male laborers in the 19th century American West and the 20th century American imperialism expansion in Asia that generated a rise in sexual violence against Asian women. The dehumanization of Asian women as “purely sexual object” must be recognized as a key source of anti-Asian violence, he writes. Sexual images of submissive Asian women stood at the core of these commodity relations in an oriental fantasy. American culture, steeped in racism, militarism, and misogyny, was defined and shaped on military bases in the Philippines, Okinawa, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.
Kurashige attributes the wave of anti-Asian violence during the 1980s and 1990s to U.S. imperialism during the cold war era. American attitudes, policies and actions produced the indiscriminate, mass slaughter of civilians in Vietnam such as the My Lai Massacre. According to Kurashige, U.S. military leaders refused to place Vietnam and Asian people as having equal value. Furthermore, the devaluing of Asian lives made U.S. an accessary to genocide in the attacks in Cambodia and Bangladesh. These war crimes in Southeast Asia evolved into hate crimes against refugees in the U.S.
Part Two of the book covers the period from the 1980s to present: “How the Murder of Vincent Chin remade Asian American Identity and Politics.” Here, Kurashige centers on the case of Vincent Chin, who, in 1982, was killed by two white workers who mistook him for a Japanese person, whom the killers blamed for being out of work because of the success of the Japanese auto industry. Chin’s killers were given light sentences.
The Vincent Chin case, Kurashige states, forced community to confront the reality of racist violence, demand recognition, and helped build a national civil rights coalition for justice. The Chin family and Asian community mobilized in Detroit by forming the American Citizens for Justice (ACJ), a pan-Asian group comprised of more than 20 community organizations to seek justice for Vincent Chin.
According to Kurashige, Ronald Ebens, one of the Vincent Chin killers, harbored a widely held white male grievance centered on a deep sense of victimhood “in the face of perceived threats from “others” and corruption from within. Foreign and nonwhite rivals were deemed a threat to the traditional order.” (I take this to mean white people feel that they are losing the white dominance and supremacy they held in the past, along with white privilege that came with it.) The implementation of civil rights laws was cast as harmful to white men, Kurashige noted as Eben thought himself to be a victim of reverse racism and unfairly persecuted. This grievance “fuel the rise of the MAGA counterrevolution,” wherein Trump supporters see themselves as perpetual victims.
The Vietnam War was brought back to America and with it the violence against the Vietnam refugees. Kurashige observes the “U.S. failed to either acknowledge its role in producing refugees or prepared to meet their needs…The combination of underlying precarity and racist stereotyping and resentment fueled the new upsurge of anti-Asian violence and intergroup conflict that arose during the 1980s and continued in the 1990s.”
Kurashige describes a number of anti-Asian incidents and efforts to combat such violence. He notes that the Vincent Chin case laid out a quai-template for advocacy around Asian hate crimes: (1) Drawing attention to discrimination against Asians, (2) Challenging the notion that such attacks are isolated incidents or not racially motivated, (3) employing a pan-ethnic Asian coalition, and (4) issue a call to bring the assailant(s) to justice.
The author described the push to pass state and federal legislation regarding hate crimes and to make them a prosecutable offense. When President Trump made constant reference to the “Chinese Virus,” which prompted a jump in crimes against Asians, the federal government passed the COVID-19 Hate Crime Act. It was designed to hold law enforcement and government agencies accountable to Asian American communities and mandated that federal, state and local officials properly record and spread public awareness of hate crimes against Asian Americans. While it was hailed as a major step towards reducing crimes against Asians, Kurashige notes that there were critics to the Act calling for investing in “community alternatives” to support those most vulnerable, such as “non-coercive mental health infrastructures, neighborhood-based trauma centers and community food banks. Such measures, he added, “can advance multiracial solidarity by promoting safety through self- reliance and collective empowerment.”
In fact, Kurashige is critical of hate crime legislation because it doesn’t deal with the conditions that make racist violence recurring – it emphasizes models of policing and incarceration that have disproportionately harmed marginalized communities
While state and federal hate crime acts were received by many as a critical step forward, Kurashige expressed skepticism of the police in protecting Asians. Regarding the attitude and actions of the police he cites instances police misconduct, cover-up, hate, and de-valuing of Asian lives
In the final chapter, “Building Community in the Face of Violence,” Kurashige reveals the story of the Asian Americans United (AAU), a Philly-based community organization as a model of community resistance against Asian violence.
Based on his many years of community activism fighting anti-Asian violence, Kurashige put forth five lessons to stop anti-Asian violence:
- Connect domestic racism with overseas imperialism
- Confront the history of erasure
- Don’t look for the “perfect” victim
- Transcend the hate crimes framework to prioritize meeting human needs
- Build multiracial alliances
Kurashige entitled the book American Peril to flip “Yellow Peril,” the danger of Asians, on its head. Yet, what this book shows is that such racist stereotypes as the concept of the “Yellow Peril” have been repeatedly deployed to justify violence against Asians in the name of American power. Indeed, American Peril builds on previous studies that document anti-Chinese, anti-Japanese, and anti-Filipino violence by providing concrete evidence that anti-Asian violence effects to southeast Asian groups and East Indians as well, and, secondly, anti-Asian violence has been constant since the arrival of the first Asian immigrants. Kurashige also provided convincing evidence of the causes of anti-Asian violence and that acts of anti-Asian were prevalent but erased (denied or minimized). That is, Part One of the book greatly adds to our understanding of anti-Asian violence in America.
However, I have some issues with Part Two of the book, which centers around the Vincent Chin murder, its impact on the Asian American community, and how to address anti-Asian violence. I think that Kurashige over-emphasizes the Vincent Chin case on our community. For sure, the case sparked our community’s demand for justice and fair treatment, awareness of anti-Asian violence, and the need for stronger hate crime legislation. But the Vincent Chin murder, and for that matter, anti-Asian violence, did not change the Asian American movement. Since the 1960s it has always been about Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI), which is exactly what Trump and the MAGA movement is against. The struggle for DEI is the fight against white racism, the very cause of anti-Asian violence. Kurashige provides lessons to stop anti-Asian violence. I say let’s not just fight anti-Asian violence, but fight for DEI, practically speaking, through the political process by defeating white racist, Trump and the MAGA movement.
Despite these concerns with Part Two, there is no question that American Peril is a huge addition to our understanding of the Asian American experience.
Scott Kurashige will be having a few events in Seattle, including the Seattle Public Library on Saturday, May 30, 2026, 2 – 3:30 , and a few bookstores, including Third Place Books and Elliot Bay Books (events listing still to come), on June 10 at 7 pm.
