Racism and “Place” in American Catholic Experience
Resources for Reconciliation in Asian American Communities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/isit.35573Keywords:
Reconciliation, Racism, Asian American, Theology of Place, Robert J. Schreiter, Catholicism, Ethnic EnclavesAbstract
Racism occurs in place. It is any place where human beings dwell such as a certain location, a house, or even a church. Racism is a lived experience that exposes the tragedy of hate and fear of the other. It pushes people into uncomfortable places. Asian Americans have built enclaves across the United States in order to maintain their cultural identity and help in resettlement. These ethnic enclaves have become, however, a way to silence and sideline Asians from the racial debates that has traditionally pitted blacks and whites for centuries. Asians have "assimilated" well into the dominant white culture but have not been completely accepted instead they continue to experience discrimination and prejudices. Even in the Church, Asian American Catholics struggle for recognition of their contribution and participation. The process of reconciliation that Robert J. Schreiter has elaborated provides an opportunity for Asian American Catholics to engage in the racial conversation while improving the Church's place in healing racism.
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Aristotle. 1963. Physics. Volume 1. Translated by Phillip Wicksteed and Francis Cornford. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bartholomew, Craig G. 2011. Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of Place for Today. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
Casey, Edward S. 1993. Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History.1997. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Cassidy, Laurie M. and Alex Mikulich. 2007. Interrupting White Privilege: Catholic Theologians Break the Silence. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
Chang, Yoonmee. 2010. Writing the Ghetto: Class, Authorship, and the Asian American Ethnic Enclave. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Considine, Kevin. 2017. “To Resist the Gravity of Whiteness: Communicating Racialized Suffering and Creating Paschal Community through an Analogia Vulneris.” Black Theology 15(2): 136–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/14769948.2017.1326738
Guest, Kenneth J. 2003. God in Chinatown: Religion and Survival in New York’s Evolving Immigrant Community. New York: New York University Press.
Harrington, L. Michael. 2004. Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Heidegger, Martin. 1993.“Building, Dwelling, Thinking.” Basic Writings. David Farrell Krell, ed. Abingdon: Routledge.
———. 1996. Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Jun, Helen Heran. 2011.Race for Citizenship: Black Orientalism and Asian Uplift from Pre-Emanicpation to Neoliberal America. New York: New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814742976.001.0001
Lee, Erika. 2015.The Making of Asian American: A History. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Lin, Jan. 1998. Reconstructing Chinatown: Ethnic Enclave, Global Change. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Lowe, Lisa. 1996. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham: Duke University Press.
Massingale, Bryan N. 2010. Racial Justice and the Catholic Church. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
McGreevy, John T. 1996. Parish Boundaries: the Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226497471.001.0001
Nguyen, Viet Thanh. 2002. Race & Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195146998.001.0001
Portes, Alejandro and Ruben G. Rumbaut, eds. 2001. Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Roberts, Dorothy. 2011. Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century. New York: The New Press.
Roy, Olivier. 2010. Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways. London: Oxford University Press.
Schreiter, Robert J. 1992. Reconciliation: Mission & Ministry in a Changing Social Order. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
———. 1998. The Ministry of Reconciliation: Spirituality & Strategies. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
———. 2008. “Establishing a Shared Identity: The Role of the Healing of Memories and of Narrative.” In Peace and Reconciliation: In Search of Shared Identity, edited by Sebastian C.H. Kim, Pauline Kollontai, and Greg Hoyland. Burlington, 7–20. VT: Ashgate.
———. 2013. “Roads to Reconciliation.” In Healing God’s People: Theological and Pastoral Approaches. A Reconciliation Reader, edited by Thomas A. Kane, 12–22. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist.
Sednak, Clemens. 2017. The Capacity to be Displaced: Resilience, Mission, and Inner Strength. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004342453
Tamayo Lott, Juanita. 1998. Asian Americans: From Race Category to Multiple Identities, Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.
Wilson, Kenneth, and Alejandro Portes. 1980. “Immigrant Enclaves: An Analysis of the Labor Market Experiences of Cubans in Miami.” American Journal of Sociology 86(2): 295–319. https://doi.org/10.1086/227240
Wirth, Louis. 1960. The Ghetto. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zhou, Min. 1992. Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Published
2019-04-05
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Hoang, L. (2019). Racism and “Place” in American Catholic Experience: Resources for Reconciliation in Asian American Communities. Interreligious Studies and Intercultural Theology, 3(1-2), 82-102. https://doi.org/10.1558/isit.35573
