Beyond Whiteness: Conservatism and Fascism in Asian American Evangelical and Catholic Communities
A New Episode of SWAJ
“Asian American conservatives are often accused of wanting proximity to whiteness or of being the surrogates of white supremacist politics. And yet, as contributors in this special issue will argue, Asian American conservatism is not just about claiming whiteness. Even though these alignments are indelibly forged from the politics of white supremacy, in many ways, these movements are particular to the communities themselves, deeply rooted in the context of the home country and fertilized by the political economy of immigrant life in the United States.”
Many are wondering how and why religious minorities in the USA adopt conservative - and even fascist - political identities when it seems that the American Right is anti-immigrant and in many cases explicitly racist. Scholars Dr. Jane Hong (Occidental) and Dr. Adrian de Leon (USC/NYU) argue that Asian American (religious) conservatism should be understood not just as an imported phenomenon from outside these communities, but as something structural within the formation of Asian America itself, within white supremacy and other political contexts in the United States.
Jane Hong, PhD, talks about what motivated her to dig into the origins of Trumpism in Korean American churches:
and just even if you're just watching the news, like how do you explain people like Bobby Jindle, Nikki Haley, um, how do you explain if you're in Southern California. How do you explain Republican congresswomen? Um, like Young Kim and Michelle Park Steele, who were actually two of the three first Korean American women ever elected to Congress.
They're both conservative evangelicals. They're both Trump supporters. They're both pro-life. They've kind of fit very much into this conservative evangelical playbook. But, They're not easily explained by, I think these ideas about people wanting to claim whiteness. Of course there are, you have to think about whiteness in terms of power structures.
Of course, folks like Nicki Haley, young Kim, they want to as they're aspiring toward kind of the power structures of whiteness, right? So there is some aspiration there, but they're not just kind of dupes or carbon copies, um, of white conservative evangelicals and. You know, for me personally as well, I think about people in my own family who voted for Donald Trump.
And, you know, my family were, I'm a second generation Korean American, um, born in New York City. My family is in New York City, New Jersey, and a bunch of them voted for Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. And, You know, they're not just like to think about my mom or my uncles, , who are pastors is just kind of wanting to be white.