Prof claims that violence against Asians from non-white people is still caused by ‘white supremacy’

A professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder claimed that “white supremacy does not require a white person to perpetuate it.”

Jennifer Ho — a professor of ethnic studies and critical race studies — wrote an article for The Conversation entitled “White supremacy is the root of all race-related violence in the US,” which alleged that even though “Black people are also attacking Asian Americans,” White people “are the main perpetrators of anti-Asian racism.”

Citing her experience as President of the Association for Asian American studies and as director of the Center for Humanities and the Arts, Ho claimed that white supremacy is the root cause of all race-related discrimination in the country. However, according to Ho, White supremacy isn’t limited to White people.

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“The point I’ve made through all of those experiences is that anti-Asian racism has the same source as anti-Black racism: white supremacy,” she wrote. “So when a Black person attacks an Asian person, the encounter is fueled perhaps by racism, but very specifically by white supremacy. White supremacy does not require a white person to perpetuate it.”

Ho defined white supremacy as “an ideology, a pattern of values and beliefs that are ingrained in nearly every system and institution in the U.S.”

Ho added that “the dehumanization of Asian people by U.S. society is driven by white supremacy and not by any Black person who may or may not hate Asians.”

Ho also claimed that anti-Asian harassment increased during the COVID-19 pandemic because of “the white supremacist ideas of Chinese people being to blame for COVID-19.”

[RELATED: Mainstream media outlets cite unscientific SFSU project to prove rise in anti-Asian crimes]

Ho also said that there is bias when it comes to which videos of discrimination gain more traction.

“Stories of individual harassment and violence perpetrated against Asian Americans by white assailants don’t always get the same attention as the viral videos of Black aggression toward Asians,” she wrote.

According to Ho’s profile on the University of Colorado Boulder’s website, her research interests include “Asian American literary and cultural studies, intersectionality, critical race studies, anti-racist theory and praxis, contemporary American multiethnic literature, critical mixed race studies.”

Ho has authored three books: Consumption and Identity in Asian American Coming-of-Age Novels, Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture, and Understanding Gish Jen.

Bennett Gallery, a freshman at the University of Colorado-Boulder, said that he finds it odd how someone could say that “white supremacy does not require a white person to perpetuate it.”

“I feel like that’s kind of weird in the sense that white supremacy can apply to anyone even though there shouldn’t be such a thing as supremacy to any kind of race that exists in the first place,” Gallery said.

Campus Reform reached out to Ho through the Center for Humanities and the Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder but did not receive a response in time for publication.

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