Twenty-Five Years after Sa-I-Gu: Multiracial Politics in Times of Crisis

Abstract

We chose to frame this conversation in terms of crisis: not only the state of permanent crisis created by racial capitalism and settler colonialism but also specific flashpoints like Sa-I-Gu [the Korean term for the April 1992 uprising in Los Angeles after the acquittal of the police officers involved in the Rodney King beating]. We want to look at the conditions surrounding these flashpoints and the responses to them that then shaped race consciousness and politics subsequently. 

Today we have no shortage of crisis, no shortage of flashpoints. And yet there is hope. Perhaps more than at any other time in my lifetime, there are opportunities to shift mass culture, at the very least to popularize and normalize a slightly more critical consciousness. So now I want to turn to my friends here to talk about crisis and multiracial politics. We’ll start with Sa-I-Gu and work forward to this moment and also to future possibilities.