What Asian American Educator Stories Reveal About Racial Nuances Within ‘People of Color’
We typically use catch-all acronyms and shorthand like “POC,” “BIPOC,” and “Black and brown people” to explain experiences of discrimination and oppression of folks within the U.S. who aren’t white. But inside these blanket phrases to explain “minorities” are dozens of cultures with distinctive heritages, ethnicities, and geographic areas. People from these cultures have nuanced histories, views, and experiences within the U.S. and in its faculties.
Within these group designations, why does it matter to know the distinctive experiences of folks of every particular person race and ethnicity?
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) incorporates markers like socioeconomic standing, monetary safety, academic attainment, and life expectancy, all of which tells a narrative of Asian American progress and achievement. For instance, NCES reported that in 2021, Asian college students earned 13.6 % of STEM undergraduate and 17.4 % of STEM grasp’s levels.[i]
Yet analysis on Asian Americans’ perceptions of belonging tells one other story. Excerpts from our interviews with Asian American Okay-12 lecturers make clear some of these nuances.
“Growing up being multiracial [Asian and white], I kind of lived a white-adjacent life, because I guess people didn’t know what to treat me as. So they’re just like, ‘Well, you live an upper-middle-class life, and you’re richer than everybody else here, so we’re just going to treat you like you’re white and you didn’t speak any other language. So there you go.’”
“I think of my [school] as such a progressive place that I often neglect the small microaggressions that happen. And it’s not from people that I work with closely, but we have two South Asian teachers, one in the math department, one in the science department. And when the math teacher’s father died, I got a lot of condolences, and so it was shocking to me. Because these were some people that I’d known for a long time and so I was like, OK, I guess they really don’t know what I teach and who I am. I’ve also had a teacher’s aide come up to me and ask me about teacher’s aide stuff. So I didn’t necessarily deal with it because it wasn’t so overt and I said, OK, they were having a bad day.”
“My boss is white, older … and has told me, on multiple occasions, that I am not Asian enough. Let me rephrase, I’m not Asian-looking enough for her to believe that I am Asian. … Instead of acknowledging that I’m Asian, there was a person on our team who is Latina, and [my boss] decided that she was more Asian-looking than me. And so, she said, ‘We’ll consider her the Asian educator and not you.’”
What Does Research Tell Us About Asian American Educators’ Experiences?
Jung Kim, Ph.D., and Betina Hsieh, Ph.D., offer succinct conceptual frameworks in their 2022 ebook: “The Racialized Experiences of Asian American Teachers in the US: Applications of Asian Critical Race Theory to Resist Marginalization.”[ii] Kim and Hsieh describe the next “polarizing binaries of Asian American representation”:
- yellow peril
- perpetual foreigner
- mannequin minority
Erika Lee, Ph.D., describes in her 2015 book “The Making of Asian America: A History”[iii] that the mannequin minority stereotype has roots in World War II and the Cold War, then was proliferated within the Eighties in newspapers and magazines. Asian Americans had been typically celebrated “for holding the formula for success” (p. 374). Lee describes the utility of the stereotype as a way to disconnect Asian Americans from different folks of coloration, particularly Black people. Lee cautions, “African American poverty has been increasingly explained as the by-product of a dysfunctional culture and delinquent family values” (p. 375). Claire Jean Kim, Ph.D., explains that “racial triangulation” is a instrument that has embedded assumptions that Asian Americans are “inferior to Whites and superior to Blacks (in between Black and White) and as permanently foreign and unassimilable (apart from Black and White)” (Kim, 2000, p. 16).[iv] Candace J. Chow, Ph.D.’s, analysis [v] presents nuanced insights in her examination of how racial identification development processes affect Asian American lecturers’ classroom methods. Chow imparts that some Asian American lecturers could name on a number of approaches, like downplaying their identities, appearing as cultural position fashions, or resisting stereotypes.
Research exhibits that Asian American educators deploy a number of methods for navigating racialization and the matrix of hyper-invisibility/visibility. This sort of identification agility is emotionally exhausting for lecturers, who’re already unfold skinny by the prevailing and heightened challenges of structural points inside the educating career. Overall, analysis illustrates that Asian American educators and Asian American, Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian communities, writ giant, aren’t homogenous — which tells us there’s so much that we don’t know and don’t give attention to about their experiences.
“People, even adults, say that to me, forgetting I’m Asian, I act just like I’m a white person.”
“I found when I’m in a space of mainly white folks, it’s a little bit easier [to address microaggressions], but in that space I’m expected to represent all people of color. And then when I’m in a space with people of color, but mainly Black and brown people, I’m not really sure where I belong.”
“How do my coworkers see me? How do my students see me? Do they see me more as white than Asian? I try to be very explicit and adamant about, this is who I am.”
Oppression Olympics
During this 12 months’s Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders heritage month, Florida mandated public schools to teach Asian American history — whereas virtually concurrently banning African American historical past, criminalizing well being look after transgender people, and being added to journey advisory lists by the NAACP and different human rights advocacy organizations for methodically legalizing discrimination towards thousands and thousands of folks.
Does this imply that Florida is secure for Asian people however not for Black and queer people? This installment of white supremacy was a strategic wedge, stretching the lifespan of the mannequin minority division tactic.
Research on relations between racial and ethnic teams categorized as minorities within the U.S. exhibits that Asian Americans have been traditionally utilized as a racial “wedge” — therefore the mannequin minority delusion that predicates the hyper-invisibility/visibility matrix many Asian Americans describe.
Bettina Love, Ph.D., conveys how former President Ronald Reagan’s concurrent Eighties War on Drugs and the Department of Education report “A Nation at Risk” emboldened anti-Blackness in schooling. While Asian Americans had been lauded as hard-working high-achievers, regardless of dealing with challenges, Black ladies had been labeled “welfare queens,” and their children had been stamped as superpredators. Research underscores the legacy of Reagan administration insurance policies on American social hierarchy, and the racial oppression olympics which have ensued for many years.
How will we divorce these unconscious ideologies that placate anti-Blackness inside the collective “people of color” group? With the current installment of racial division in Florida, how can folks of coloration largely fight the methodical racial wedge in pursuit of intersectional racial justice?
“If we, as teachers, are consistently feeling like our identities are not honored, imagine how our students must feel in these spaces.”
What Can Education Leaders Do?
Because there are such a lot of misconceptions and information gaps in regards to the diversity of cultures and identities within Asian American communities, self-education is essential. It’s tough to point out solidarity and respect for folks you don’t know a lot about.
It’s additionally tough to fix the official damage that the racial oppression olympics has induced between the huge group that makes up the class of folks of coloration.
Our individuals usually mirrored that they anticipate their faculty and district leaders to:
- educate themselves;
- perceive microaggressions with respect to Asian American identities; and
- not tokenize them.
To do that, a tradition of dedication to self-education could start to assist schooling leaders of all races and ethnicities perceive how anti-Blackness has been embedded into schooling, how race neutrality isn’t an choice, and the way educators’ racial identities inform their skilled identities.
“White supremacy does so much to all of us.”
Disaggregating People of Color
As a Black researcher, educator, and professional committed to intersectional racial justice, I observe that learning about the humanness of people with whom I research puts much of the racial division in context of a broader history of Eurocentrism and imperialism.
Our research is consistent with existing research that examines Asian American educators’ sense of belonging in their communities. Because this umbrella term of BIPOC consists of such diverse groups of people, when we listen to individuals’ stories, we learn that racial justice requires a much more nuanced approach.
References
[i] US NCES: Table 318.45. Number and percentage distribution of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees/certificates conferred by postsecondary institutions, by race/ ethnicity, level of degree/certificate, and sex of student: Academic years 2011-12 through 2020-21.
[ii] Kim, Jung & Hsieh, Betina, 2022. “The Racialized Experiences of Asian American Teachers within the US: Applications of Asian Critical Race Theory to Resist Marginalization.” Routledge.
[iii] Lee, Erika, 2016. “The Making of Asian America: A History.” Simon & Schuster.
[iv] Kim, Claire Jean, 2000. “Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City.” Yale University Press.
[v] Chow, Candace J., 2021. “Asian American Teachers in U.S. Classrooms: Identity Performances and Pedagogical Practices. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 21-41.
