Stephanie Hinnershitz. Race, Religion, and Civil Rights

In Race, Religion, and Civil Rights: Asian Students on the West Coast, 1900–1968, Stephanie Hinnershitz expands the long civil rights movement to include the activism of Asian international and second-generation Asian American university students who were part of regional and national networks connected to the work of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). In particular, Hinnershitz focuses on Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino Christian groups on the West Coast with the core of the book spanning the interwar period through the early post–World War II years. The study seeks to bring Asian American, civil rights, immigration, and ethnic histories into conversation with one another. Two central and interrelated arguments frame the narrative. The first argument is that students who encountered racial discrimination on and off campus responded through the lens of their Christian faith to promote interethnic and interracial solidarity. The disconnect between notions of the U.S. as a Christian nation and their own negative experiences sparked student groups to reflect upon and eventually to work toward remedying the situation. Despite their foreign status, international students thought of the U.S. as a place to advocate for better race relations. The equalizer of racial discrimination enabled Asian international and second-generation Asian American students to work together and to reach across ethnic and racial lines.

Argument (complex analysis) · Ethnic group · Faith · Immigration · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Solidarity · Theology · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies