Microaggression in the Age of “Anti-Asian Hate”

Abstract The consolidation of Asian racialized subjects into a singular population and minority category—Asian American—is a process that has involved both external and internal forces. While the sociological construction of the category emphasized changing migration processes, especially after the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, from a psychological standpoint the curation of Asian Americans as a specific psychic archetype and a domestic population started in the 1970s during the height of the civil rights movement. This article explores the inseparable connections between Asian migration and Black revolts in the construction of the modern Asian American subject. While disciplinary divisions have curated different histories and epistemologies in the formation of Asianness, Blackness, and Asian Americanness, this article argues that it is necessary to look at the political and affective crossings that have constituted these modern subjects instead of treating them as disconnected subject matters.