Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Civil Racism
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://english.osu.edu/people/itagaki.5 * https://asianamericanstudies.osu.edu/people/itagaki.5
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.:
n 2015062414
LCCN Permalink:
https://lccn.loc.gov/n2015062414
HEADING:
Itagaki, Lynn Mie, 1974-
000
00376cz a2200121n 450
001
9993375
005
20151021151357.0
008
151021n| azannaabn |n aaa
010
__ |a n 2015062414
040
__ |a DLC |b eng |c DLC |e rda
100
1_ |a Itagaki, Lynn Mie, |d 1974-
670
__ |a Her Civil racism, 2016: |b ECIP title page (Lynn Mie Itagaki) data view (Itagaki, Lynn Mie; born 09/27/74)
953
__ |a rf14
PERSONAL
Born September 27, 1974, in Honolulu, HI.
EDUCATION:Harvard University, B.A. (with highest honors); University of California, Los Angeles, M.A., Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. University of Montana, Missoula, assistant professor, 2004-09; Ohio State University, Columbus, assistant professor, 2009—.
MEMBER:Road tripping, knitting.
WRITINGS
Contributor of chapters to books, including Shadow of Selma, University Press of Florida, 2018. Contributor of articles to scholarly journals, including African American Review, MELUS, and Amerasia Journal.
SIDELIGHTS
Lynn Mie Itagaki is a writer and educator. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and both a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2004, Itagaki joined the University of Montana, Missoula as an assistant professor. She held that position until 2009, when she became an assistant professor at Ohio State University. Itagaki teaches in the school’s department of English, as well as in its department of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. She has written articles that have appeared in scholarly journals, including African American Review, MELUS, and Amerasia Journal. She has also contributed chapters to books, including Shadow of Selma.
In 2016, Itagaki released her first book, Civil Racism: The 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion and the Crisis of Racial Burnout. In this volume, she examines how various groups responded to the uprisings that occurred in Los Angeles after the beating of Rodney King and the acquittal of the officers who attacked him. Itagaki coins the term, “civil racism,” which she defines as maintaining civility, even if maintaining it means perpetuating racial inequality. She explains that Asian Americans and Latinos were mostly ignored during the uprisings, though they certainly had opinions on the riots and were affected by them. Itagaki describes the political climate at the time, highlighting Buchanan’s presidential run and his revanchist rhetoric. In an article she wrote on the University of Minnesota Press Blog, Itagaki stated: “Although revanche is French for ‘revenge,’ revanchism has the historical connotation of reclaiming lost territory that is felt to be rightfully one’s own nation’s, specifically the Alsace-Lorraine province of France that was lost to Prussia in 1870. Geographer Neil Smith has connected revanchism to the decades-long gentrification policies that justified the removal of poor people (of color) from cities (see: Neil Smith). This vengeful logic appears as the ubiquitous slogan that supports causes from all over the political spectrum: ‘Take Back America.’ In 1992, Buchanan ended his blockbuster speech with his own version of this call to not-entirely-metaphoric arms.”
In the same article, Itagaki discussed the timeliness of analyzing the 1992 uprisings, stating: “As the antagonists were then in 1992, so they are in 2016: America has been overrun with and must be ‘taken back’ from terrorists, from criminals, from immigrants, from protestors.”A reviewer in the Journal of Pan African Studies noted: “This book insists that the 1992 ‘riots’ continue to matter, that the artistic responses matter, and that … debates about issues of race, ethnicity, class, and gender are more urgent than ever.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Journal of Pan African Studies, March, 2016, review of Civil Racism: The 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion and the Crisis of Racial Burnout, p. 561.
ONLINE
Ohio State University, Asian American Studies Website, https://asianamericanstudies.osu.edu/ (August 22, 2017), author faculty profile.
Ohio State University, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Website, https://wgss.osu.edu/ (March 28, 2016), article about author.
University of Minnesota Press Blog, http://www.uminnpressblog.com/ (July, 2016), article by author.*
Lynn Itagaki
Assistant Professor, Departments of English and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Faculty
I came to the Ohio State in Autumn 2009 as a joint appointment in English and Women's Studies. I received my M.A. in Asian American Studies and Ph.D. in English from UCLA and my B.A. with highest honors from Harvard University. I was born in Honolulu, Hawai`i; all my great-grandparents immigrated from Japan to the islands at the turn of the 20th century to work on the plantations, but I grew up in Los Angeles for most of my life—my parents still work in downtown Little Tokyo. From 2004 to 2009, I was an Assistant Professor in English at the University of Montana in Missoula. As the visiting scholar in Women's Studies during the spring and fall quarters, I developed the four-part film series, "Asian/Pacific Islander Women, Activism and Art," that highlighted a broad range of current issues facing API women today. In addition to 20th-21st century U.S. literature by writers of color, I also specialize in comparative race theory, feminist theory, and visual culture. I am currently finishing a book manuscript on the 1992 Los Angeles Crisis and the post-civil rights era, and my next project looks at how contemporary forms of spectatorship change the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. I have published articles and reviews in journals such as African American Review, Amerasia Journal, and MELUS.
Lately I seem to have made long, 2000-mile road-trips a hobby, but driving through Montana is always beautiful (except in winter). I'm a foodie, a knitter, and a fan of police procedural TV dramas, the more dissection, the better.
QUOTED: "Although revanche is French for "revenge," revanchism has the historical connotation of reclaiming lost territory that is felt to be rightfully one’s own nation’s, specifically the Alsace-Lorraine province of France that was lost to Prussia in 1870. Geographer Neil Smith has connected revanchism to the decades-long gentrification policies that justified the removal of poor people (of color) from cities (see: Neil Smith). This vengeful logic appears as the ubiquitous slogan that supports causes from all over the political spectrum: “Take Back America.” In 1992, Buchanan ended his blockbuster speech with his own version of this call to not-entirely-metaphoric arms."
"As the antagonists were then in 1992, so they are in 2016: America has been overrun with and must be 'taken back' from terrorists, from criminals, from immigrants, from protestors."
On the vengeance of a divided country, 1992 and 2016
BY LYNN MIE ITAGAKI
Associate professor, The Ohio State University
Violence in the Middle East. Upheavals in Europe. Anxieties about American decline. Economic fears. A recent recession. Police brutality caught on video. Interracial conflict. Attacks on the police. A Clinton presidential campaign.
The year was 1992, although it could just as easily be 2016.
On the first night of the Republican National Convention in Houston 24 years ago, primary challenger Pat Buchanan took the stage to deliver his famous “Culture War” speech in which he argued that he and his supporters, the “Buchanan Brigades,” were fighting a religious and cultural war “for the soul of America.” He conceded to his bitter rival, President George H.W. Bush. Although the historical details might be different now than those more than two decades ago—the Persian Gulf War had just ended; Europe reeled from the Bosnian War; the trade war was with Japan; the Cold War ended; Black motorist Rodney King was physically beaten by four White and Latino police officers, the act of which was caught on a home video camera, and Los Angeles burst into flames after their acquittal and mistrial—the anger and frustration of the Buchanan Brigades was a palpable and surprisingly large minority of Republican primary voters.
This minority has grown in influence, from substantial fringe to king-making majority. In the 2016 election cycle, the bulk of Republican voters channeled that particular anger and frustration into the GOP presidential nomination of Donald J. Trump—not just a surprising primary challenge of a sitting president as in Buchanan’s case in 1992. One liberal pundit has characterized Trump’s supporters as deploying vengeance and revanchism. Although revanche is French for "revenge," revanchism has the historical connotation of reclaiming lost territory that is felt to be rightfully one’s own nation’s, specifically the Alsace-Lorraine province of France that was lost to Prussia in 1870. Geographer Neil Smith has connected revanchism to the decades-long gentrification policies that justified the removal of poor people (of color) from cities (see: Neil Smith).
This vengeful logic appears as the ubiquitous slogan that supports causes from all over the political spectrum: “Take Back America.” In 1992, Buchanan ended his blockbuster speech with his own version of this call to not-entirely-metaphoric arms. He talks of how a young group of soldiers who, having recently returned from the Persian Gulf War, protected a senior convalescent home during the Los Angeles Rebellion and how their bravery should inspire citizens through this presidential election and beyond: “And as those boys took back the streets of Los Angeles, block by block, my friends, we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country.” For Buchanan, we must take back America from “the mob” using “force” albeit “rooted in justice.”
As the antagonists were then in 1992, so they are in 2016: America has been overrun with and must be "taken back" from terrorists, from criminals, from immigrants, from protestors.
Often referred to as backlash politics, much of this anger has been attributed to the perception that America has lost (or will lose) its unequivocal global dominance, no longer the undisputed winner of the Cold War as the lone, unassailable global superpower. The 1990s were riven by such concerns as “balkanization” and interethnic strife that had shaken and toppled governments around the world in the post-Cold War era.
The logic of backlash politics fuels what I call racial equilibrium (see: Chapter 3, "The Territorialization of Civility, the Spatialization of Revenge"). If one group appears to win, then another should lose; eventually the losers win and the winners lose with a net gain zero. To understand racial politics in this way is a reductive, dangerous, and false equivalence. The fatal shootings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge are often argued to counterbalance the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, implying that the deaths of the police officers by Black men now supersede the deaths of Black men by police officers. These deaths ostensibly represent a false choice between support for law enforcement or support for their killers. As my colleague Treva Lindsey writes, “One can mourn the loss of life in Dallas and fight against racist policing. To be clear, these are not opposing positions.”
Comments on the shootings of police in Dallas by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, a public intellectual who has been celebrated for his self-professed centrist politics, captures how even the center-left have found common cause with the right:
“Civilization rests on the rule of law, and that rests on respect for officers of the law. I have never liked hearing marching crowds that chant slogans such as 'No justice, no peace.' That is a not-so-veiled threat against the basic rules of civil society. We all rely on the police and other elements of the criminal justice system to maintain order, which is the building block of justice. Look at countries such as Iraq and Libya today, where order has collapsed. The rule of law has been replaced by the law of the jungle.”
The criminal justice system leads to order, which leads to justice, which grounds civilization. To disrespect police officers, as an element of the justice system, thus destabilizes civilization. The problem with Zakaria’s point about civilization is that he creates a false dichotomy, an implicit us versus them: those who respect officers of the law and support civilization, and those who don’t respect officers of the law and support instead some putative “law of the jungle.” However, if justice is the bulwark of civilization, and the merits or strengths of a civilization is judged by the justice it dispenses, then where there is little justice, there is little civilization even with respect for officers of the law.
What if instead we were to understand the protestors’ chants of “No Justice, No Peace” as a description of the experiences of entire communities, numbers that continue to grow beyond the loved ones that Castile and Sterling left behind? The “not-so-veiled threat” that Zakaria identifies is the protesters’ bringing these injustices and rights violations to the broader U.S. public and forcing these wider audiences with little firsthand experiences to include these injustices as part of the America to which they belong. The more accurate dichotomy, then, is between those who feel they have had justice and peace that can be disrupted by the protesters and those who feel they have never had justice or peace in the first place. In other words, if we feel that our experiences have largely been about justice and peace, then we have been lucky enough to have lived in a world that has been relatively protected from the daily lived experiences of the protesters and the victims of police brutality. The question remains whether we will respect and recognize these experiences as part of the everyday America we live in and the history we claim as our own.
This division indicates the “two societies” toward which we have moved, not “one white, one black” as the original 1968 Kerner Commission Report read, published after years of urban unrest had sparked across the nation, taking lives and burning out neighborhoods. Instead, our nation today is divided between those who believe the U.S. system of justice is fair and those who do not. These divisions force us to answer hard questions about whether our society and civilization will be marked by the inclusiveness and understanding that so many politicians, policymakers, and pundits insist American society to be. Will our concept of America include and understand these experiences of injustice and unwarranted state violence so that we will protest the killing of one of our own, whether civilian or police?
Now, with consequences far greater than this presidential election, we get to choose: which America will we take back, the one of division or inclusion?
-------
Lynn Mie Itagaki is author of Civil Racism: The 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion and the Crisis of Racial Burnout. She is associate professor in the departments of English and women's, gender, and sexuality studies and the Program Coordinator in Asian American Studies at The Ohio State University.
"Lynn Mie Itagaki’s book is an incisive critique of the civil racism that has become dominant in both liberal and conservative discourses of race in the post-Civil Rights era."
—Daniel Kim, Brown University
Lynn Mie Itagaki, "Civil Racism: The 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion and the Crisis of Racial Burnout”
Monday, March 28, 2016 - 3:30pm
Dulles Hall 168
itagaki_civil racism
Lynn Mie Itagaki is an Assistant Professor in the departments of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, as well as the Coordinator of the Asian American Studies Program. Her book Civil Racism: The 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion and the Crisis of Racial Burnout (University of Minnesota, 2016) examines a range of cultural reactions to the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion (also known as the Rodney King riots) anchored by calls for a racist civility, a central component of the aesthetics and politics of the post-civil rights era. Lynn Mie Itagaki argues that the rebellion interrupted the rhetoric of “civil racism,” which she defines as the preservation of civility at the expense of racial equality.
Reception and books available for purchase via cash or credit card after the talk.
This is a part of the DISCO Research and Creative Activities Series for emerging work from scholars engaging in research in the areas of diversity and identity studies.
Sponsored by the Diversity and Identity Studies Collective at OSU & Asian American Studies.
Free and open to the public.
QUOTED: "This book insists that the 1992 'riots' continue to matter, that the artistic responses matter, and that ... debates about issues of race, ethnicity, class, and gender are more urgent than ever."
8/21/17, 4)18 PM
Print Marked Items
Itagaki, Lynn Mie. Civil Racism: The 1992 Los
Angeles Rebellion and the Crisis of Racial
Burnout
Journal of Pan African Studies.
9.1 (Mar. 2016): p561. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 Journal of Pan African Studies http://www.jpanafrican.org/
Full Text:
Itagaki, Lynn Mie. Civil Racism: The 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion and the Crisis of Racial Burnout. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2016, pp. 312, ISBN: 9780816699216.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
This book examines a range of cultural reactions to the "riots" anchored by calls for a racist civility, a central component of the aesthetics and politics of the post-civil rights era. The author argues that the rebellion interrupted the rhetoric of "civil racism," which she defines as the preservation of civility at the expense of racial equality. As an expression of structural racism, she writes, civil racism exhibits the active-though often unintentional--perpetuation of discrimination through one's everyday engagement with the state and society. She is particularly interested in how civility manifests in societal institutions such as the family, the school, and the neighborhood, and she investigates dramatic, filmic, and literary texts by African American, Asian American, and Latina/o artists and writers that contest these demands for a racist civility. And she specifically addresses what she sees as two "blind spots" in society and in scholarship. One is the invisibility of Asians and Latinas/os in media coverage and popular culture that, she posits, importantly shapes Black-White racial formations in dominant mainstream discourses about race. The second is the scholarly separation of two critical traditions that should be joined in analyses of racial injustice and the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion: comparative race studies and feminist theories.
The 1992 Los Angeles rebellion, also known as the Rodney King riots, followed the acquittal of four police officers who had been charged with assault and the use of excessive force against a Black motorist. The violence included widespread looting and destruction of stores, many of which were owned or operated by Korean Americans in neighborhoods that were predominantly Black and Latina/o. This book insists that the 1992 "riots" continue to matter, that the artistic responses matter, and that--more than twenty years later--debates about issues of race, ethnicity, class, and gender are more urgent than ever. The author is an assistant professor in the departments of English and women's, gender, and sexuality studies, and program coordinator in Asian American Studies at The Ohio State University.
about:blank Page 1 of 2
8/21/17, 4)18 PM
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Itagaki, Lynn Mie. Civil Racism: The 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion and the Crisis of Racial Burnout." Journal of Pan
African Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 2016, p. 561. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA461364099&it=r&asid=2d5b6cb6e9c89aa629a1f4cc277d9239. Accessed 21 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A461364099
about:blank Page 2 of 2