Asian American Desire, Kinship, and the Racial Conscience: A Discussion of “Racial Rage, Racial Guilt: The Uses of Anger in Asian America”

I am honored to be discussing David Eng and Shinhee Han’s article, “Racial Rage, Racial Guilt: The Uses of Anger in Asian America.” Eng and Han describe the emotional impact of living as a “middle man” Asian American minority. Racial rage is the affective experience of living in a society that overlooks Asian American subjectivity. The authors take the transformation of guilt into the capacity for concern to be crucial to accessing rage. The authors state that racial solidarity in same-race treatments can help facilitate this change. Using their formulation of racial rage, I will elaborate 3 issues:

1. Alongside racial rage there is frequently an unmet desire for love.

2. I like racial solidarity to kinship transferences and will describe resistances to this.

3. I will expand on Eng and Han’s formulation of racial rage and will integrate the ideas of black rage, moral injury, varieties of guilt, and the racial conscience.