Christopher K. Ho (Artist and Curator)

“Racism doesn’t exist in China.” Spoken by a Chinese graduate student at a southern American art school reckoning with institutional racism, this comment elicited confusion, even rage, from classmates and faculty alike. Yet dominant racial discourse tends to center the United States, and, in the words of Paul Gilroy, “project the world only in black and white.” What are our racisms—racisms between East, Southeast, and South Asians, and against non-Asians? How do these differ structurally from those rooted in western legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and enslavement? What discursive characteristics are imported from the United States, and which are endemic to the variegated cultures and terrain of Asia?