Reinventing Citizenship: Black Los Angeles, Korean Kawasaki, and Community Participation

My book, Reinventing Citizenship: Black Los Angeles, Korean Kawasaki, and Community Participation, positions the case of the American Community Action Program (CAP), a core program of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” in a transnational context by juxtaposing it with the case of the Japanese Model Community Program (MCP). I examine how local activists in both Los Angeles and Kawasaki forcefully challenged official welfare institutions, created oppositional discourses and movements, and voiced alternative visions of citizenship. While African American leaders addressed the inadequacies of the American welfare system from inside the welfare state and revised the New Deal legacy that reinforced racial and gender inequality, Koreans in Japan, who had been pushed outside the boundaries of citizenship and denied the right to welfare, contested the limited notion of citizenship and abolished the nationality clause. I also delineate the ways in which black theology and black freedom struggles were embraced and translated by Koreans in Japan. In so doing, I further document the interconnected and transnational histories of African Americans and zainichi Koreans in their pursuit of citizenship rights. The stories of both African American and zainichi Korean mobilization show why it is imperative for historians to explore comparative and relational histories of antiracist alliances.
 

(Written by Kazuyo Tsuchiya, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences)