Assistant Professor K. Ian Shin was quoted in a Los Angeles Times article by Sewell Chan released on June 22:

"K. Ian Shin, an assistant professor of American culture and history at the University of Michigan, noted in an interview the ways in which white supremacy and xenophobia have operated in tandem.

'History shows us that the way we talk about scientific phenomena can lead to the dehumanization of minority groups,” Shin said. “Whether it’s the ‘Oriental scale’ that afflicted citrus trees at the turn of the 20th century or the ‘Japanese beetles’ that infested the East Coast in the 1920s and 1930s, racist terms justified and enabled the containment and even eradication of Asian communities in the U.S. They paved the way for anti-Asian immigration legislation and wartime internment of Japanese Americans that we recognize today to be unjust and un-American.'”

The full article is available here.