Description

Chino is a history of comparative race relations that considers the function of anti-Chinese politics in shaping Mexican mestizo national identity during and after the 1910 revolution. Evidence from U.S. and Mexican archives shows how anti-Chinese politics created a nationalistic public sphere. Building on the hemispheric turn in Asian American Studies, this talk argues that Mexican anti-Chinese politics differed from U.S. racial politics because Mexican Orientalism was expressed, as mob violence, social campaigns, and government policy to aid the post-revolutionary enlistment of an indigenous citizenry. These developments became the basis of new social bonds across the country and enabled a diverse Mexican polity to claim and occupy a state-endorsed mixed-race, mestizo identity (inclusive of indigeneity). Chino critiques a monolithic notion of racism by marking out a comparative methodology for transnational racial analysis in the Americas.

Jason Oliver Chang is Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies and History at the University of Connecticut. He also serves as Associate Director of the Asian and Asian American Studies Association. He earned his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in Comparative Ethnic Studies.