“Sounds about White!”: countering the erasure of Asian American scholars in critical Whiteness studies

Abstract

As the field of critical whiteness studies (CWS) grows, some white scholars argue that only whites should undertake the study of whiteness. Other white scholars acknowledge the contributions of scholars of Color to the academy, yet rarely draw on the scholarship of authors of Color to push the field to grow. This commentary critiques these phenomena by tracing the scholarly lineage of CWS and highlighting Asian American scholars’ theorizing of whiteness. It concludes with a bilingual poem to illustrate how Asian American scholars can counter both the exclusion of their voices in CWS and the ongoing violence against the Asian Diasporas as escalated by the COVID-19 pandemic.