Chapter 21: Historicizing Anti-Asian Racism to Promote Justice for Asian Americans Post-Pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian racism has festered in the United States. While some perceived this phenomenon as new, others revealed the U.S. history of blaming Asian Americans for contagious diseases (An and Rodríguez 2021). Despite increasing calls to promote anti-racist education, many U.S. teacher education programs often neglect anti-Asian racism due to the dominating whiteness in their faculty demographics, curricular design, and teaching praxis (Han 2019). Moreover, neoliberal reforms have caused many U.S. teacher education programs to emphasize methods courses and devalue social foundations courses to increase institutional revenues (Hartlep et al. 2015; Warren and Venzant Chambers, 2020). These barriers predetermine that most preservice teachers are inadequately prepared to historicize racial injustice in U.S. K-12 schools and society, especially regarding anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, this essay proposes some techniques to address these inequities.