Author: Vincent Po

Coming to this lecture was pretty cool for a few reasons. First, I had Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor as a teacher just last semester, so seeing how she engaged with someone she considered to be a peer was particularly interesting given how different it was when she engaged with us. In placing the talk in an Asian American context, I think it really hammered home the idea of how Asian American history and thought owes so much to African American history and thought, which in many ways had decades if not centuries of a head start, and addresses many overlapping issues. One quote from Alexander that I really liked was “I believe all politics are identity politics,” arguing that politics can absolutely never be divorced from identity. While this is particularly important in a discussion between, say, white and black politicians, as they may struggle to agree on what aspects of their history remain relevant (the debates about if racism is over in America show just how far we have yet to go in admitting that the present is a cumulative integral of the past) it relates to Asian Americans because it forces us to confront just what exactly is our identity and who exactly shaped it (was it our own doing, or the result of someone with higher social or political power shaping a collective identity for their own gains?)