328 PG243-292Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World — Comprehensive Study Notes
I Introduction
The Asian American movement of the 1960s–1970s is conventionally narrated as a moment when activists forged an Asian American subjectivity and politics, united multiple Asian national origin groups under a panethnic banner, and redefined their relation to the Black freedom struggle.
Inspired by the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party in particular, Asian American activists rejected assimilation, embraced their Asian heritage, and aligned with a Third World United Front against global white supremacy and imperialism.
Contemporary sympathy for the movement often rests on its legacy of cross-racial solidarity; however, a structural critique highlights a recurring omission: many Asian American activists did not theory-craft anti-Blackness or its real-world implications. The result is a half-finished critique that left the constitutive not-Blackness of Asian Americans largely unthought.
The text notes that in retrospect, three central dynamics emerge:
A strong indictment of white supremacy, but a limited or absent theorization of anti-Blackness within the coalition.
An emphasis on the subordination of all not-white groups without addressing the relative positions among not-white groups (e.g., Black–not-Black hierarchies within an anti-Black order).
An ethical and interpretive crisis: without a cogent anti-Blackness analysis, Asian Americans can struggle to respond effectively to urgent community events (e.g., LA 1992 uprising, police killings in 2014–2020).
Two state-driven recognitions are highlighted as paradoxical gains for Asian Americans: the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 (Japanese American reparations) and the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act of 2021 (condemning hate crimes against Asian Americans and channeling resources to law enforcement). Both enjoyed support from white conservatives and, in effect, offered a form of recognition that did not extend to Black people.
The author argues that this pattern illustrates how anti-Blackness operates structurally: not-Black groups can be mobilized to advance their own mobility while preserving a racial hierarchy that continues to devalue Blackness.
II The Black Panthers and Carcerality
Loïc Wacquant’s framework: the modern urban ghetto is a “peculiar institution” linked to three predecessors—slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration—serving dual purposes: labor extraction and social ostracism of Black people.
After shifts from manufacturing to service economies and urban rebellions in the 1960s, the prison system arose as a solution to the surplus Black labor and the ghetto’s inability to contain Black threat.
The Black Panther Party (Oakland, 1966) anchored its practice in a critique of the carceral state: armed patrols, Free Huey campaigns, and campaigns for political prisoners, with a newspaper that narrated ongoing war with carceral systems.
The Panthers’ Ten Point Platform positioned carceral reform centrally (Points 6–9):
Point 6: Black people should not be forced to fight in a racist military.
Point 7: End police brutality and the murder of Black people.
Point 8: Freedom for Black people in jail and prison.
Point 9: Right to a jury of peers.
The Panthers framed the ghetto as an internal colony; they adopted revolutionary nationalism informed by Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism, aligning with a broader anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist internationalism.
Intellectual and artistic imagery connected to a global anti-imperialist struggle (e.g., Emory Douglas’s poster “Get Out of the Ghetto” crowding a U.S. imperialist figure).
They publicly refused to recognize the U.S. state as legitimate when used to oppress Black people, even while engaging with non-Black groups in a way that often complicated cross-racial coalitions.
The Panthers proposed international political actions, including a UN-supervised plebiscite for Black national destiny and a UN Human Rights Commission petition condemning U.S. genocidal practices.
The Panthers vehemently opposed the Vietnam War as a racist, imperialist enterprise; they criticized the draft’s disparate impact on Black communities.
COINTELPRO and FBI suppression: the Panthers were the primary target of COINTELPRO (out of 295 initiatives, 233 targeted the Panthers: ~79%).
Chicago raid on Fred Hampton (Dec 4, 1968): an FBI-CPD operation killed Hampton and another Panther; later investigations revealed evidence of malfeasance and exaggerated resistance by police.
Symbolic artifacts of state violence (e.g., Fred Hampton’s Door, the “door” as interface between outside and inside) as a way to interrogate opacity and concealment in police violence.
The Panthers’ rhetoric sometimes walked a tightrope: they emphasized Black centrality and anti-capitalist solidarity with other oppressed communities but did not explicitly theorize anti-Blackness or the structural weaponization of not-Black groups against Black struggle.
There was an evolution in the Ten Point Platform (1972) to include language like “Black and oppressed communities” and “people of color,” while paradoxically continuing to discuss reparations in the Black context and often omitting explicit references to other groups.
III The Asian American Movement
Asian Americans formed a distinct political identity in the late 1960s and saw themselves as subjects who could join a Third World solidarity movement, influenced by Carmichael’s notion that every Oriental could be a potential Asian American.
Larry Kubota’s Yellow Power (1969) called for Asian Americans to join with Black, Brown, and Red allies for self-determination and a humane society.
San Francisco State College’s Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) strike (1968) positioned Asian Americans alongside other people of color to demand ethnic studies; they supported George Murray, the Black Panther Party Minister of Education, who faced political retaliation.
S. I. Hayakawa, a Nisei linguist, served as interim president of SF State during the strike; a controversial figure whose minority status and anti-strike stance aligned with conservative white opposition.
Within the Japanese American community, there was notable support for Hayakawa from some Nisei leaders and media (e.g., Hokubei Mainichi naming him “Nisei of the Year”), indicating internal divisions about campus confrontations and the direction of civil rights-era reform.
Daryl Maeda’s Chains of Babylon (2009) frames the postwar era as a window where Asian Americans could choose between assimilationist or Third Worldist paths. He argues that some opted for a multiethnic, anti-imperialist stance, which, while ethically compelling, obscured structural advantages that Asian Americans held over Black people.
Amy Uyematsu’s Emergence of Yellow Power (1971) assessed the unequal access to opportunity, arguing that Asian Americans benefited from white supremacy’s structure while Black people faced white-dominated obstruction; Uyematsu argued that Asian American passivity could be used to downplay Black protest.
Alan Nishio’s “The Oriental as a ‘Middleman Minority’” (1969) discussed how whites use “the Oriental” to integrate (or “divide further”) Black and Brown communities and to keep the plantation politics in place; Asian Americans could serve as “houseboys” defending the plantation from Black “slaves.”
The structural advantage of Asian Americans was an open secret, which public discourse often neglected: the movement’s heavy emphasis on pan-ethnic coalition sometimes smoothed over intra-minority power dynamics and the “not-Blackness” framework.
Richard Aoki’s role as a field marshal in the Black Panther Party and as a member of the TWLF granted Asian American movement a degree of street credibility, though it also fed into debates about authenticity and cross-racial solidarity.
The Red Guards (an Asian American youth group) adopted many Panther-like strategies and platforms; the Panthers invited them to join with “Black Panther-” style programs, but the Red Guards’ embrace of Blackness was criticized as a form of “blackface” political imitation by some theorists, while others argued their actions reflected a broader pan-Asian radicalism.
The text notes that white domination and anti-Blackness are interwoven with intra-Asian dynamics, including the debate around whether the Red Guards’ imitation of Blackness was authentic political solidarity or a form of appropriation that could undermine Black struggles.
The discussion of “Solidarity/Disavowal” culminates in a tension: Asian American activists could pursue solidarity with Black struggles, but their own structural advantages and anti-Blackness blind spots risk displacing or disavowing Black suffering.
IV Asian Americans as Affirmative Action Spoilers
The Bakke (Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 1978) decision framed the legal and political debate on affirmative action in higher education:
The Court upheld affirmative action but restricted it, setting the stage for later challenges and “spoiler” arguments.
The court’s decision leaned on a memorandum by Powell’s clerk, Bob Comfort, which argued that racial classifications, even if benign, must be reviewed with strict scrutiny; it warned about the difficulty of sociometric (intergroup) analysis in determining who has been harmed the most and who should benefit.
Comfort’s memo argued against a principled, objectified ranking of groups by the degree of injury; he framed sociometry as inherently unreliable and claimed that race-conscious classifications could not be justified by a simple tally of injuries across groups.
Powell’s concurrence used Comfort’s logic to advance a different rationale for race-conscious admissions: diversity as a compelling state interest under the First Amendment, enabling robust exchange of ideas and educational benefits.
Footnotes to the Bakke decision explicitly foreground Asian Americans as potential spoilers to Black subjection, complicating the narrative of discrimination and injury. Three key points:
Footnote 36 notes that Justices Brennan, White, Marshall, and Blackmun argued that Black people would have better test scores absent societal discrimination, but didn’t discuss Asians in that context.
Footnote 37 suggests the need to assess how to allocate preferences if we considered multiple groups’ injuries; it mentions the University of Washington’s policies (Chinese and Japanese individuals treated differently) as a potential complexity.
Footnote 45 criticizes the idea of a Black-only remedy by showing that the University of California, Davis, had a special admissions program favoring four groups, including Asians, which raised questions about the scope of “special programs.”
Powell’s opinion uses these footnotes to argue that Asian Americans’ presence in special admissions could undermine the perceived need for remedies, effectively making Asian Americans “spoilers” in the calculus of remedial policies.
The text argues that the Asian American spoiler logic rests on linking discrimination to injury in a way that flattens structural anti-Blackness and treats all minority groups as interchangeable in the harms caused by white supremacy.
The author contends that a more nuanced sociometry would reveal the Black abjection as structurally singular and would reframe the status of Black people within a larger anti-Black order, potentially reconstituting how compensatory justice is pursued.
V Japanese American Reparations
The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 apologized for Japanese American internment and provided $20,000 to each survivor; it was a long-sought victory for Japanese American activists.
The central ethical and political question raised was whether reparations for Japanese Americans should come at Black people’s expense, given a century-long Black reparations debate rooted in slavery and segregation.
By the 1970s, Black reparations activism (Black Manifesto, reparations campaigns) had been ongoing for decades; Japanese American redress movements emerged with three integrated strands:
The JACL (Japanese American Citizens League) lobbying for a commission to study internment and policy recommendations.
NCRR (National Coalition for Redress/Reparations) advocating for a more militant critique of internment as structural racism, aligned with Third Worldist/People of Color perspectives.
NCJAR (National Council for Japanese American Redress) pursuing class-action litigation for redress.
The JACL’s approach emphasized constitutional rights and national unity, framing reparations as a universal American issue rather than a Black-specific historical injury; NCRR and NCJAR pressed for more radical, structural redress that linked internment to broader racial oppression.
The congressional redress process involved hearings (e.g., CWRIC) where JACL officials faced questions about reparations’ potential to open the door to Black reparations; conservatives used the Black reparations debate as a political lever to contain the scope of redress.
The debate over “notional latency”: some activists urged that reparations for Japanese Americans were not just about money but about symbolically recognizing state wrongdoing; others warned that focusing solely on internment nostalgia would obscure ongoing Black suffering and the need for universal remedies.
The text argues that the Japanese American reparations movement was used to project an image of national redemption, often at the expense of recognizing Black suffering. The act symbolically recognized non-Black groups (particularly Japanese Americans) while effectively preserving a racial hierarchy in which Black pain remained unaddressed.
Leslie Hatamiya and Eric Yamamoto offered analyses reflecting on the reparations movement’s legacy, noting tensions between acknowledging past wrongs and refusing to undermine Black reparations struggles. Yamamoto suggested reparations could contribute to broader intergroup solidarity if wielded to advance a more comprehensive healing of racial oppression.
The author points to the “not-Blackness” advantage in reparations politics: the idea that not-Black groups could foreground their own harm while leveraging a national moral economy that may downplay or defer Black claims.
Oblique references to the ongoing tension between reparations rhetoric and the broader fight for Black justice, and the need to address how reparations narratives shape intergroup relations going forward.
VI Obadele v. United States
In reaction to Bakke and the Asian American spoiler debates, some Black scholars argued that reparations for Japanese Americans should not come without addressing Black claims for reparations; Vincene Verdun and J. Angelo Corlett argued that Black people suffered more severely and for longer than Japanese Americans and thus deserved greater redress.
Imari Obadele, a Black nationalist leader and cofounder of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), argued that reparations and self-determination should be linked with sovereign rights and global Black solidarity (including a UN-supervised plebiscite for Black political destiny in former states).
Obadele and co-plaintiffs (N’COBRA) pursued legal challenges asserting that the exclusion of Black people from the Civil Liberties Act violated the Equal Protection Clause; their case sought broader reparations and challenged the prioritization of Japanese American redress.
The RNA’s approach tied reparations to a broader anti-imperialist and anti-colonial framework, arguing for self-determination and a reconfiguration of national borders as part of reparatory justice.
The U.S. government used COINTELPRO-style tactics to disrupt Black reparations organizing, and the case of Obadele v. United States (2002) became a focal point for debates on comparative desert and reparations across races.
The Federal Circuit ultimately rejected Obadele and Rashid’s claims in 2003, upholding the prior decision that the Civil Liberties Act was narrowly tailored to redress internment of Japanese Americans and did not extend to Black reparations under the Act.
Although the Obadele suit failed in legal terms, it remains a historically significant articulation of the structural favoritism toward Asian Americans and the inter-group tensions that reparations politics can generate within the U.S. racial order.
VII The Not-Blackness of Soon Ja Du
The LA uprising (April 1992) foregrounded the emergence of the Korean American community as a distinct “ascent” in the Asian–Black gap. Korean immigrant storeowners—often middle- to lower-middle-class and educated—entered Black neighborhoods to operate small businesses, benefiting from not-Black status in a white-dominated racial order.
Korean Americans were not as heavily subject to residential segregation, overt police violence, or the carceral system to the same extent as Black residents, enabling a relative mobility and access to white-adjacent spaces that Black residents lacked.
The Latasha Harlins case (March 16, 1991) became a focal point: Soon Ja Du, a Korean storeowner, shot Latasha Harlins in the back of the head after an alleged confrontation; the trial ended with a relatively lenient sentence for Du (a suspended 10-year sentence, five years’ probation) despite clear evidence of aggression and the fact that Du had initiated the confrontation.
The trial’s sentencing, and the public framing of Latasha as the aggressor in some media and by some public officials, underscored how Black lives are perceived in anti-Black society and how non-Black actors could secure lenient treatment or shield from accountability.
The Koreatown and LA community response included support for Du from some segments of the Korean American community and public figures, with contemporaneous debate about whether the acquittal reflected broader state devaluation of Black life.
The text argues that Soon Ja Du’s not-Blackness (and, more broadly, not-Black eligibility for protection and impunity) serves as a mechanism through which anti-Blackness operates, enabling some non-Black actors to avoid accountability while Black people remain structurally marginalized.
The case exposed a wider pattern: during times of interracial conflict, the state’s protection of property and order can be selective—protecting not-Black property while failing to shield Black lives.
VIII Korean American Innocence
The LA uprising narrative often portrays Korean Americans as innocent victims minding their own business who become scapegoats in a Black–white race war.
Korean Americans were framed as scapegoats and “human shields” in the struggle between Black protest and white power; some scholars describe a “triple scapegoating” framework in which Korean Americans faced looting and violence from Black communities when uprisings occurred, were abandoned by white powerholders, and were subjected to sensationalized media coverage.
The frame of Korean innocence is reinforced by the representation of Koreans as non-Black and not fully complicit in anti-Black violence, even as individual Korean storeowners participated in violent acts against Black residents.
The broader question raised is how to reconcile Korean immigrant trauma with Black suffering within an anti-Black order; how to acknowledge the violence faced by Korean Americans while not excusing acts that harmed Black communities.
The discussion sets up the framework for later sections that interrogate how “not-Blackness” functions in law and policy, including the role of Korean Americans in the LA uprising and the representation of Blackness in media and scholarship.
IX Sa-I-Gu, the Movie
Sa-I-Gu (1993) is a documentary by Korean American filmmaker Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, with Christine Choy and Elaine Kim, centered on Korean American women who owned stores in Los Angeles during the 1992 uprising.
The film centers Eddie (Edward Jae Song Lee), the only Korean American killed in the uprising, and frames his mother’s grief as a central emotional arc.
The documentary foregrounds Korean American victimhood and property loss, often at the expense of exploring Black victims’ suffering or Black community perspectives. The film’s structure and editing emphasize Korean women’s experiences and losses, shaping audience empathy toward Korean storeowners and away from Black suffering.
The film’s opening scene situates Eddie as a central figure of loss, with his mother Jung Hui recounting her son’s involvement and grief; the narrative consistently returns to Eddie’s story as a symbol of the Korean American experience.
The production and subsequent reception reveal debates around whose grief is prioritized in narrative representations of intergroup conflict and how such representations can reinforce or challenge the anti-Black order.
The film raises questions about the ethics of documentary storytelling: what stories get foregrounded, which voices are excluded (notably Black voices), and how representation can reproduce power asymmetries even when trying to document injustice.
The filmmakers later released Wet Sand: Voices from L.A. (2004), seeking to broaden the focus to include Black, Latino, and white victims; however, Eddie’s story remains central, illustrating how narrative framing can shape public memory about the uprising.
X Brian Ho v. SFUSD
The Bakke-era “Asian Spoilers” logic reappears in the context of K–12 affirmative action debates, particularly in Lowell High School, an elite San Francisco public school with a rigorous admissions program.
In the 1990s–2000s, affluent Chinese immigrant communities mounted a legal and political challenge to race-conscious admissions plans at Lowell, arguing that such plans burden Asian American students while helping Black and Latino students.
This local fight became a proving ground for anti-affirmative action organizing and is presented as a precursor to more widespread anti-affirmative action rhetoric on the national stage.
By 1971, Johnson v. SFUSD marked earlier antiracial segregation struggles in San Francisco, establishing context for later anti-affirmative action lawsuits and the broader national debate.
The Lowell campaign helped mobilize a broader political coalition of conservative and middle-class Asian American groups that would later participate in national anti-affirmative action campaigns.
The text links these local efforts to the Grutter and Fisher line of cases (Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003; Fisher v. University of Texas, 2013), where race-conscious admissions faced legal scrutiny and evolving interpretations of diversity as a compelling state interest in higher education; the Lowell case is framed as a microcosm of the broader national struggle.
XI Asian/American Blackface
The text notes a tension around Blackface and pan-Asian solidarity: some Asian American activists and thinkers (e.g., Frank Chin) criticized the Red Guards for imitating Blackness, arguing that Asians were engaging in a form of “blackface minstrelsy” by adopting Blackness without earning it, thereby erasing Blackness’s specificity.
Others (e.g., Daryl Maeda) argued that the Red Guards’ imitation reflected solidarity and homage rather than denigration; the debate centers on intent versus impact and whether adopting Blackness as a political instrument helps or harms Black communities.
The broader point is to interrogate how Asian American movements have used Blackness in their own political projects, and what the consequences are for the Black struggle when not-Black groups adopt Black political signifiers.
The discussion also engages with questions about the authenticity of solidarity, the risk of co-optation, and the ways in which white supremacy can instrumentalize minority groups against one another.
XII Richard Aoki’s Two Uniforms
Richard Aoki, a prominent figure in the Black Panther Party and a leader within the UC Berkeley’s Third World Liberation Front, carried a dual symbolic role: his “two uniforms” represent his integrated experience within Black radical politics and within Asian American activism.
Aoki’s alignment with Black Panthers provided him (and Asian American activists more broadly) street credibility and political capital, allowing him to bridge communities and institute cross-racial study and organizing.
However, Aoki’s ties to the Panthers also fed a broader debate about authenticity and allegiance within the Asian American movement and the extent to which Asian Americans could genuinely participate in Black radical political projects without compromising their own group’s unique concerns.
The text situates Aoki within a broader network, noting that the Black Panthers and Red Guards invited cross-pollination between Black and Asian American leftist circles, including exchanges with North Korea, Vietnam, and Algeria, that reflect a broader anti-imperialist solidarity across non-white groups.
The discussion reflects on the dangers and opportunities of cross-ethnic mobilization in anti-racist struggles and how internal dynamics (e.g., “two uniforms”) reflect broader tensions around identity, loyalty, and political effectiveness.
XIII Asian Americans as Spoilers in Grutter and Fisher
The Bakke decision served as the foundational framework for later debates in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Fisher v. University of Texas (2013), where the U.S. Supreme Court held that race could be used as one factor among many in pursuit of diversity in higher education.
The text argues that Asian Americans were treated as “spoilers” in the Bakke era and continued to appear as a potential obstacle to the racial remediation of Black suffering in subsequent cases.
The Comfort memo’s sociometric approach warned of the difficulty of ranking groups by injury, and Powell’s emphasis on diversity as a compelling state interest further complicated how race-conscious admissions could be justified.
The footnotes repeatedly single out Asian Americans as a group whose experience might complicate claims of black injury, suggesting that Asian Americans’ success in higher education could be read as evidence against the necessity of race-conscious remedies for Black people.
The argument emphasizes that the notion of “minority parity” becomes a political instrument that could be used to elide the singularity of Black abjection and the need for targeted reparative justice.
The text argues that a more nuanced sociometry would acknowledge the historical specificity of Black oppression and counter the notion that Asian Americans’ success undermines Black claims to remedy.
XIV Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard
The text lists this as a key section, recognizing that SFFA v. Harvard (the case challenging Harvard’s race-conscious admissions practices) represents the latest phase in the anti-affirmative action movement and its attempt to reframe the relationship among minority groups in higher education.
While the provided passages do not detail SFFA v. Harvard, the placement suggests that the author would analyze how the case fits into the broader narrative of Asian Americans as spoiling the pursuit of Black reparative justice, and how the court’s rulings could influence the shape of future affirmative action policies.
XV Black Lives Matter and the Asian American Policeman
This section is listed but not elaborated in the provided pages; the title indicates a discussion of how Black Lives Matter intersects with Asian American political life, policing, and the carceral state, including how Asian American communities navigate state power and the policing regime when Black lives are at stake.
The intent is to explore ethical, political, and practical implications of cross-racial solidarity and carceral politics in the contemporary era, including how Asian American communities engage with anti-Blackness in a post-George Floyd context.
XVI The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act of 2021
This section, listed in the contents, marks a turn to more recent legislative responses to anti-Asian hate, specifically the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act of 2021.
The act represents a state-driven attempt to address anti-Asian violence, but the text argues that such measures can function as part of a broader anti-Blackness regime that offers recognition to Asian Americans while not addressing Black suffering and structural racism.
The analysis situates this act within the broader pattern of state recognition that can be used to advance mobility for Asian Americans, while leaving Black communities under persistent structural disadvantage.
Key cross-cutting themes and concepts
Not-Blackness and structural anti-Blackness:
Not-Blackness is shown to function as a structural advantage within a white supremacist order, enabling Asian Americans to gain mobility and state recognition while Black people remain subordinated.
The “Asian American spoiler” thesis argues that presenting Asians as presumptive beneficiaries of color-conscious remedies can obscure Black suffering and complicate the pursuit of reparative justice.
Carceral state and anti-Blackness:
The carceral state is linked to a wider era of anti-Blackness; the ghetto–prison continuum and police violence shape Black life and the possibility of cross-racial solidarity.
Reparations as political theater and ethical dilemma:
The Japanese American reparations movement is presented as both a legitimate redress for internment and a strategic move that could undermine Black reparations by appealing to policy elites and white sensitivity to minority rights.
Obadele v. United States showcases the tension between addressing historic grievances for one group while acknowledging deeper, systemic racial injustices that affect Black people more severely.
Representation, memory, and narrative framing:
Sa-I-Gu and related documentary/film projects reveal how media representation shapes collective memory and political understandings of intergroup conflict.
The prioritization of certain voices (Korean American storeowners) over others (Black victims) is a central concern for how democracy and justice are imagined and implemented.
The legal architecture of race-conscious policy:
Bakke, Grutter, and Fisher illuminate how the courts have negotiated the balance between redressing past discrimination and avoiding new forms of racial hierarchy or “spoiler” effects.
Contested legacies:
The movement’s mixed legacy invites ongoing interrogation of how to build inclusive coalitions that acknowledge Black suffering as a matter of urgent justice while acknowledging the legitimate concerns and harms faced by other racialized groups.
Notable numerical references and legal points (LaTeX-formatted)
COINTELPRO targeting of Black Panther Party: out of 295 initiatives, targeted the Panthers (approx. rac{233}{295} imes 100 \, ext{≈}\, 79 ext{%}).
Black Panther Ten Point Platform includes Points 6–9 centered on anti-war stance, police violence, prison abolition, and juries.
The Civil Liberties Act of 1988: reparations of per survivor for internment victims.
Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Fisher v. University of Texas (2013) as evolving contexts for race-conscious admissions and diversity as a compelling state interest (First Amendment context and educational benefits).
The U.S. government’s reparations framework and budgets:
Japanese American reparations: per survivor.
Proposed New Afrikan reparations by N’COBRA: a multi-billion annual program (e.g., a placeholder annually for Black reparations) in some proposals.
The Durban Declaration (2001) and Durban Conference outcomes framed slavery and the transatlantic slave trade as crimes against humanity; United States resisted full reparations discussions at Durban.
The 1992 LA uprising included property damage and casualties, including Eddie Lee’s death; the film Sa-I-Gu documents this event from a Korean American perspective.
If you want, I can condense these notes further by reducing some subsections or expand any section with more direct quotes, dates, or case citations. I can also generate a version organized strictly by themes (e.g., anti-Blackness, reparations, media representations) if that helps for exam prep.