Aporia of Internalizing Whiteness: The Racialization and Social Exclusion of Korean Americans during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The racialization and social exclusion during the COVID-19 pandemic have contributed to a sharp increase in anti-Asian violence and discrimination on a global scale. There was increasing racialization and social exclusion against other Asian ethnic groups, particularly Chinese, among Korean individuals by rising ethnonationalism while Korean communities across the region in the world have been targets of racial/ethnic hate incidents, violence, and racism. This study delves into why some Korean communities normalized racialization and social exclusion as their survival strategy in the period of the pandemic and how the idea of “whiteness” can be internalized and reproduced by some Korean communities as practices. Based on an empirical investigation of Korean immigrants in the United States, this study particularly seeks the answers to the following research questions: 1) What kinds of experiences in racial/ethnic exclusion and victimization did Korean immigrants undergo during the pandemic? And how did they respond to this racial/ethnic discrimination and victimization? 2) What were the reasons for upsurging Anti-Asian hate during the pandemic and how did they affect Korean immigrants to shape their perceptions and practices on racialization? 3) how did Korean immigrants reshape their ethnic identities as Koreans and/or Asians by experiencing anti-Asian violence and racism and where did they reposit their racial/ethnic identities on the hierarchy of “the global field of whiteness”? 4) How did Korean immigrants’ pandemic experiences and practices affect to change their relationships with other racial/ethnic groups? By investigating the pandemic experiences of Korean immigrants, this study examines how the idea of “deep and malleable whiteness” (Christian 2019) ceaselessly penetrates and reproduces among the racial/ethnic minorities on racial hierarchy and how the shades of whiteness in conjunction with ethnonationalism are appropriated by disadvantaged populations in society to “internalizing whiteness” as a survival logic in disastrous conditions like the pandemic.