Asian American / Asian Research Institute
The City University of New York
Based on her CUNY FORUM essay, sociologist Prema Kurien argues that understandings of race in India continue to influence the ways in which Indians and South Asians carry the baggage of racialized colonial ideas intertwined with notions around caste hierarchy and the realities of different linguistic groups in India.
Economic and structural inequality, racial scapegoating, and anti-Asian xenophobia all played a role in violence against Asian Americans, then, and continue unabated to today in 2021. Against the backdrop of the continuing global Covid-19 crisis and anti-Asian violence and hate in the United States, we present to you the reader some signals of hope and reclamation on the local and national level: Asian Americans recognizing and reclaiming their place in the larger civil society despite immense institutional and ideological barriers.