Historical continuities of exclusion: Texas, Asian communities and the politics of belonging

Abstract

Abstract

This article traces the continuity of anti-Asian exclusion in the U.S. through the case of Texas land legislation. In 1921, Texas enacted the South’s first land ban targeting Japanese families, drawing on Western, particularly Californian, precedents. More than a century later, in 2025, the legislature passed Senate Bill 17, barring land purchases by nationals of selected countries, with China as the main focus. Although presented as a matter of national and food security, the measure repeats an older racial script that casts Asians as perpetual foreigners and security risks. The study uses a historical and structural approach to connect early court rulings, property laws, internment, and more recent episodes of scapegoating, from economic fears in the 1980s to anti-Asian rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic. The argument is that discrimination has not disappeared but adapted, moving from explicit racial bans to policies framed in neutral language that still target communities by origin. Texas provides a clear example of how exclusionary projects persist, shift, and remain embedded in political institutions.