Autoethnographically Interrogating School-Based Anti-“Asian” Racism in Post(?)-Pandemic Times: An AsianCrit-Informed Composite Palimpsest

Abstract

The ongoing racialized violence against “Asian” communities—that was simultaneously illuminated and amplified during COVID-19—is not a geographically isolated phenomenon. Vis-a-vis the Atlanta Massacre of 2021 and other senseless attacks on “Asian” Americans stemming from white supremacist fears of the Yellow Peril, “Asian” Australians have likewise been, and continue to be, victims of everyday old and new racisms rooted in Orientalist discourses and concomitant fears of the invading Other. As microcosms of society, schools are germane for the analysis, confrontation, and transformation of such racialized injustices and so, as a means of intervening in these everyday inequities, this paper weaves an AsianCrit-informed autoethnography with palimpsestuous composite narratives drawn from semi-structured interviews in a broader project with other migrant “Asian” Australian teachers to chronicle personal and professional race-making practices in the face of racism before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, while also rethinking and re-stor(y)ing a–way toward more hopeful, inclusive futures in schools.