Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics

Volume 42, Issue 1, Spring/Summer 2022

Ki Joo Choi
Pages 189-206

Interrupting the Violence of Racial Identities: Lessons from Asian American Experience, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and “Truth Force”

Sustained reflection on multiple expressions of Asian American experience directs us to the coercive logic of racial identities. Noticing this logic is critical to identifying the limitations of several strategies to resist and transcend racial injustice, including the demand for racial recognition. Rereading the Parable of the Good Samaritan as one about the perils of racial identity and then taking cues from the nonviolent practice of truth force provide a blueprint that reimagines the liberative role racial identities can play.