When I was a grad student at UCLA, I cringed at the supposedly humorous explanations for that acronym that described a type of Asian Invasion such as “University of Caucasians Lost Lost Among Asians” or “You See Lotta Asians.” That harks back to the Yellow Perilism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries which resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. Any time I hear the word “invasion” and we’re not talking about history, I wonder if racism is involved.
The documentary “White with Fear,” which premieres on Tuesday, 24 March 2026 is a 90-minute exploration about how we got to where we are today and the concept of “strategic racism.” Unlike many documentaries that skew Black versus White, this one includes Asian Americans such as Pakistani American Wajahat Ali, author of “Go Back Where You Came From”; Maneesh Arora, associate professor of political science at Wellesley College; Aasif Mandvi, former correspondent for “The Daily Show; and Mae Ngai, professor of Asian American Studies at Columbia University.
While the documentary which was written and directed by Andrew Goldberg (“The Iranian Americans,” 2012, and “Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence, ” 2009) doesn’t mention the California-born William Randolph Hearst (29 April 1863 – 14 August 1951) who was one of the driving forces behind anti-Asian sentiment, it does begin with another famous Californian: Yorba Linda-born Richard M. Nixon (9 January 1913 – 22 April 1994).
What I remember Nixon for, besides Watergate, is his infamous “pinko” smear in his 1950 Senate campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas. “She’s pink right down to her underwear!” he claimed. She was “the Pink Lady.” Of course, Nixon wasn’t the only one. Alabama governor George Wallace complained about “the left-wing pinko press” and “pseudo-pinko-intellectuals.”
Because this documentary was first released in 2024 at the Chelsea Film Festival, it came out too late for what happened in 2025. Still “White with Fear” addresses a lot of the backlash we see now against the first Black president, Barack Obama, although it doesn’t address the kind of slurs I was surprised to read and hear about First Lady Michelle Obama.
It also doesn’t consider that perhaps while Detroit in 1968 was considered “all-white” that’s because of the manner in which the US Census Bureau divides up people then and now. According to the Pew Research Center, there was a “onetime inclusion of a ‘Mexican’ race category in the 1930 Census,” but the 1970 census was the first to use a “Hispanic origin question.”
For that reason, when a Latina took her case to marry a Black man in the 1948 Supreme Court of California case, Perez v. Sharp, it was about a White woman marrying a Black man.
There are other reasons that Whiteness is an issue in Dearborn. North Africans are excluded from the designation of African American or Black. West Asians are also considered White and excluded from the designation of Asian American. Yet this doesn’t reflect the prejudice felt by North Africans and West Asians. For those reasons, the 2030 US Census will introduce a new category of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA).
- Reporting of Middle Eastern and North African Response in the 2020 Census Race Question (20 December 2024)
- Why Arab Americans Are Pushing for “Middle East or North African” Category on the Census (28 April 2023)
One case often cited involved a California man, George Shishim, “whose race was considered Chinese or Mongolian because he was born in Lebanon.” In 1909, he argued, “If I am a Mongolia, then so was Jesus, because we came from the same land.”
Still, “White with Fear” is an interesting documentary about “strategic racism” and questions our “radicalized understanding of crime.” This is only one aspect of the threats that stoke White fear. The very understanding of the world is being challenged by women and ethnic minorities as fields are being expanded and our understanding of history, science and culture begins to include the contributions of women and minorities. Living in Los Angeles and California, it’s worth remembering that White people were so afraid of the Asian Invasion that they supported the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 as well as a host of racist ordinances, including Alien land ownership laws. The World War II incarceration of people of Japanese descent and the last usage of the Enemy Alien Act during a congressionally declared war, affected thousands of people in California.
“White with Fear” is currently streaming on PBS, but that might mean the documentary is only preaching to the choir and won’t penetrate the vacuum occupied by people who are White with fear. I hope there is a sequel in the works.
Age of the Geek 