“I Hate My Own Race. The Teachers Just Always Think We’re Smart”: Re-Conceptualizing the...

Nicholas Daniel HartlepIllinois State University, USA

Modern Societal Impacts of the Model Minority Stereotype

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Modern societal impacts of the model minority stereotype / Nicholas Daniel Hartlep, editor. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4666-7467-7 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-1-4666-7468-4 (ebook) 1. Asian Americans--Social conditions. 2. Asian Americans--Race identity. 3. Asian Americans--Education. 4. Model minority stereotype--United States. 5. Racism--United States. 6. Asian Americans in popular culture. 7. Mass media--Social aspects--United States. 8. United States--Race relations. 9. United States--Ethnic relations. 10. United States--Social conditions--1980- I. Hartlep, Nicholas Daniel. E184.A75M63 2015 305.895’073--dc23 2014045459

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DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-7467-7.ch008

Chapter 8

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“I Hate My Own Race. The Teachers Just Always

Think We’re Smart”:Re-Conceptualizing the

Model Minority Stereotype as a Racial Epithet

ABSTRACT

The chapter examines how Asian American female youth resist the Model Minority Stereotype (MMS). The author reports findings on the identity struggles of three youth who are raced as the “smart Chinese girls,” gendered as “the Chinese so-rority sitting in the back of the room,” and classed as “low-income kids at a ghetto school in Chicago.” The findings discuss how teacher-student relationships impact youth identity formation, and how youth desire cultural identities free from racist discourse perpetuated through “racial epithet” (Embrick & Henricks, 2013). Re-conceptualizing the MMS as a “racial epithet” challenges educators to disrupt racialized discourses.

Sophia RodriguezThe College of Charleston, USA

“I Hate My Own Race. The Teachers Just Always Think We’re Smart”

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INTRODUCTION

Educational researchers continue to problematize and attempt to unravel the model minority stereotype (Conchas & Pérez, 2003; Ngo, 2010; Ngo & Lee, 2007). Studies in the sociology and anthropology of education about the model minority stereotype engage with the dominant discourses relevant for larger studies of immigration issues, and connect students’ educational experiences with identity and achievement (Lee, 2009). Additionally, Conchas and Pérez (2003) argue, “The model minority has been the dominant folk model of Asian American school performance and social mobility” (p. 42). While research on the model minority stereotype often focuses on whether or not Asian Americans live up to this stereotype, and the ways in which middle-to-upper-class Asian and Chinese immigrants have been “ideologically whitened,” which mirrors their status and characterization as model minorities (Lee, 2009; Ong, 1999), more recent research in education attempts to capture variation across Asian immigrant students and their levels of achievement. In particular, identity formation of Asian students is shaped by how students interpreted the nature of their interracial relations relative to non-Asian and Asian groups by issues of social class and by their perceptions of future job opportunities (Lee, 2009). This view supports Ogbu’s (1978, 1987) and Ogbu and Simons’ (1998) claim that voluntary minorities tend to recognize the importance of schooling in shaping their social and economic mobil-ity. In spite of this, not all Asian students in Lee’s (2009) study accept this model minority identity that places them as identifying with the dominant, host society’s values. The point overall is that the model minority stereotype is not explanatory of Asian students’ achievement levels or desire for school success. Rather, multiple factors shape school success, and research needs to account for variation in achieve-ment in school within and across Asian American groups.

Similarly, Staiger’s (2006) study found that some Cambodian minorities chose identities of the dominant racial group in the schoolyard such as African American students. These African American students did not maintain an academic identity; rather, their social identity as the tough ones in the schoolyard was appealing to Cambodian minorities. The pattern among Cambodian immigrants’ choice to live up to the model minority stereotype was not consistent, but Staiger found that most of the time Cambodian (and Latino, too) immigrants chose identities of dominant racial groups in the schoolyard for self-preservation reasons. Staiger’s (2006) study showed that Cambodian students did not always choose the academic identity that would lead to positive achievement, contrary to what the model minority stereotype would assume about this group given their connection to an Asian background. Additionally, other scholarship that complicates the model minority stereotype can be seen in Lee’s (2009) study. Lee (2009) found that Asian- and Korean-identified


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students’ choice to live up to the model minority stereotype did lead to positive academic achievement. In contrast, other Asians in Lee’s study rejected the model minority identity because they perceived it as racist, and harmful to their interracial relations. The considerable variation in how identity formation occurs in Lee’s and Staiger’s study suggests that identity formation occurs through social relations and discourses about ethnicity, e.g., the model minority stereotype, instead of what the dominant, cultural-ecological model theorists characterize Asians—as a “monolithic entity devoid of within-group variation” (Conchas & Pérez, 2003, p. 43)

This chapter’s contribution to scholarship is that it conceptualizes the model minority stereotype as a “racial epithet” (Embrick & Henricks, 2013). Previous scholarship tends to focus upon structural barriers for immigrants’ academic success, outdated models of assimilation, and an equally problematic theory of segmented assimilation (Portes & Fernandez-Kelly, 2008; Portes & Zhou, 1993; Rumbaut & Portes, 2001) without accounting for variation in achievement for Asian students or variation in identity formation processes. The conceptual frameworks that previous scholarship utilizes include segmented assimilation theory and notions of social capital or social networks. This chapter contributes to the literature on the ways in which Asian Americans experience differential educational experiences in relation to their Asian, Asian American, and Latino peers. To elaborate, this study seeks an understanding of the micro-level interactions and cultural experiences of Asian American female students in an urban high school, nested within a neighborhood marked with high levels of concentrated poverty and a majority population of La-tino immigrants. Specifically, I report findings on the tenuous identity struggles of three young females who are raced as the “smart Chinese girls,” gendered as “the Chinese sorority sitting in the back of the room,” and classed as “low-income kids at a ghetto school on the south side of Chicago,” as they grapple with and engage in the sense-making processes that relate to their identity and their sense of belonging in school (Field notes, November, 2012).

The identity formation process for the female youth I focus on here provides insight into the ways that teacher-student relationships impact identity formation of youth and their sense of belonging in school, the way young female youth cri-tique immigration issues through their own sense-making of their racial and ethnic identity, and their desire for cultural identities that are free from racist discourse perpetuated through “racialized epithets” such as the model minority stereotype (Embrick & Henricks, 2013). Through a cultural study of immigrant youth identity, we can begin to dismantle the model minority stereotype by insisting that we move beyond ascription of identity, and through the narratives of youth we can critique dominant discourses around immigration issues as they relate to the schooling of immigrant youth.


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CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

This chapter conceptualizes the model minority stereotype as a “racialized epithet” (Embrick & Henricks, 2013) and engages the notion of “racial logic” in schools (Lewis, 2001, 2003a, 2003b, 2004). These concepts are employed in order to prob-lematize the usefulness of the model minority stereotype. This section defines each of these concepts, and then suggests that the model minority functions as a “racial-ized epithet”1 as part of the “racial logic” of the school in the study. This chapter’s contribution is that it conceptualizes the model minority as a “racialized epithet” and exposes the “racial logic” operating at the school in the study. To dismantle the model minority stereotype, this study locates the ways in which the stereotype produces racialized subjects in unproductive ways and against the desires of youth.

Hom (2008, p. 416) argues that “[r]acial epithets are derogatory expressions” because they contain negative semantic content. While the model minority stereotype may not be derogatory on the surface like other racialized epithets mentioned below, to apply the concept of racialized epithet to it is to say this stereotype still contains symbolic derogatory content. The model minority stereotype contains symbolic derogatory semantic content because it assumes that the school success of immigrant groups is contingent upon a particular cultural disposition maintained in some groups while not in others. Ngo (2008) argues, “The cultural difference model for explaining immigrant student achievement problematically positions educational outcomes as a product of the cultural practices of immigrants. At one extreme, explanations of low achievement point to bad cultural practices” on the part of some immigrant groups (p. 5). Racialized epithets such as the model minority seem innocuous in that they assume that Asian American immigrants writ large experience success in school in such a way that it should be mirrored by other immigrant groups regardless of any factors that may impede on school success. The symbolic meaning imbued in a racialized epithet such as the model minority is that it reflects racial and ethnic minorities’ positioning in the racial hierarchy—whites on top, Asian Americans in the middle as honorary whites, and Blacks on the bottom.

The purpose is not to say that the model minority as a racial epithet has the same consequences and implications as other racial epithets used against African Americans (the N-word) or Latin@s (wetback) because as Embrick and Henricks (2013) argue, “Racial epithets are unequal [. . .]. Racial slurs of differing groups are hardly equivalent because each term entails unique meanings, applications, and consequences” (p. 201). Rather, seeing the model minority stereotype as another type of racialized epithet is a starting point that seeks to open up the ways in which the model minority functions to “sustain racial antagonism” and consequently “re-produces an inequitable racial order” (p. 199). Embrick and Henricks, drawing on Bonilla-Silva (2001), further outline the concept:


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Epithets and stereotypes sustain racial antagonism, and consequently reproduce an inequitable racial order. Because they mark status differentials among racial groups, epithets and stereotypes can function as political instruments of power. Just as Bourdieu (1977) stressed with symbolic systems of capital, epithets and stereo-types are instruments of power because they legitimize hierarchal arrangements when acted upon. It is through everyday discourse, as critical race scholars have shown, that racist structures are reinforced and legitimated. Discourse conditions how people think about and interact with others. It fosters a medium through which the racial order crystallizes in everyday interaction, also known as the racialized social system. (Embrick & Henricks, 2013, p. 199)

The symbolic meanings imbued in a term such as the model minority for Asian American immigrant youth relate to identity and culture, and these meanings position these immigrants against other immigrant groups using a racial logic. To elaborate, the ways in which scholars have applied the model minority stereotype in schools and public venues create discursive conditions and are implicitly interconnected with feelings or assumptions about other racial groups. This is precisely the issue with using the model minority as it privileges the experience of Asian American immigrants over other non-Asian immigrants. In addition, the model minority stereotype also ignores challenges that many Asian American groups encounter in American society (McGowan & Lindgren, 2006). The point is that racial epithets and stereotypes are “power speech” and function to exclude various racial groups. Considering this in the context of the study in this chapter, the youth resist the ways in which these racial epithets operate to position them in particular ways in their everyday school experiences.

Before moving onto the findings, this chapter argues that the model minority stereotype functions as a type of racial epithet as part of a particularly problematic racial logic at the school in the study. By racial logic, Lewis (2004) means the ways people talk about and think about race. Lewis’ anthropological work problematizes the ignorance about the ways in which race operates through discourse and mate-rializes in institutional practices in schools. She argues that “[r]acial ideologies in particular provide ways of understanding the world that make sense of racial gaps in earnings, wealth, and health such that whites do not see any connection between their gain and others’ loss. Whites [in the school she studied] often fail to understand how race shapes where they live, who they interact with, and how they understand themselves and others” (Lewis, 2004, p. 633). Racial logic in a school could function as the appearance of sorting students in different tracks in the name of fairness, or in order to best prepare students for success. As the data in this chapter suggests, the racial logic in the school is that the Asian students are smart when compared to other immigrant groups in the school. Additionally, the youth in the study experi-


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ence a “process of racialization,” meaning they are marked by teachers and their academic program label (e.g. International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement or regular) in subtle and not so subtle exclusionary practices (Lewis, 2003a, p. 141). Lewis (2001, 2003a) posits that racial categories such as Asian, Latin@, Hispanic, or Black are imbued with meaning. This chapter addresses the racial logic of the school in this study in a later section.

Bonilla-Silva (2001), Embrick and Henricks (2013), and Lewis (2001, 2003a, 2003b, 2004) elucidate the concept of racialized epithets and the racial logic in schools. Considering the symbolic meaning underlying racial epithets and the racial logic of the school in the study, it became useful to think of the model minority as a racialized epithet and to note how it functions to position youth in particular ways in order to reproduce differential educational experiences in the school. The racial logic, or the process of racialization operating in the school, is composed of teach-ers’ and other adults’ perceptions of immigrant groups in their school.

STUDY DESIGN AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

This qualitative ethnographic study was conducted to understand the identity forma-tion processes of youth in an urban community-school. Anthropologists in education are interested in using identity as a heuristic for understanding school success of students, particularly those of racial and ethnic minority groups (Chikkatur, 2012; Ek, 2009; Gee, 2001; Villenas, 2009, 2012) because anthropological perspectives engage in questions related to cultural practices and identities associated or disas-sociated with particular cultural backgrounds. Studying the ways in which youth negotiate, resist, or even attempt to distance themselves from particular racial and ethnic identities became possible through the ethnographic, anthropological method in this study, and studying youth perspectives in the context of a community school yielded their perceptions of identity and belonging at the school. Previous sociological and psychological research explores immigrant identity formation from dualistic paradigms that highlight deficits of immigrant students’ personhood (Flores-Gonzalez, 2002; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001; Suárez-Orozco et. al., 2010) and perpetuates the model minority stereotype through cultural-ecological models (Ogbu, 1978).2 Instead, this study approaches identity as multidimensional, fluid, and emerging out of social relations (Ek, 2009). A fluid model of identity has not been employed widely in educational research on immigrant students. A recent study (Ngo, 2010) considers the ways in which Asian American student identity can be seen as a multiplicity. The discussions about identity and culture of the three female youth in this chapter illustrate the multiplicity of identity.


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The central question of the larger critical ethnographic study relates to the iden-tity formation experience of immigrant youth, documented and undocumented, in a community school in Chicago. The study was framed as a critical ethnography (Madison, 2012) in order to consider the perceptions of identity and community for immigrant youth within a broader socio-political context and to consider the voices and power dynamics of marginalized youth (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006; Madison, 2012; Noblit, Flores, & Murillo, 2004). For purposes of this chapter, I draw on ethnographic data, which includes participant-observations and interviews to pursue the following specific, exploratory questions: 1.) How do female youth—perceived and stereotyped as model minorities by school staff—identify racially and ethnically? 2.) How does the school position them through its racial logic, and how do these female youth articulate their school experience in relation to how they are perceived racially and ethnically by the school? 3.) To what extent do school spaces limit other identities of these female youth, and where and how do these youth explore other socio-cultural identities?

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

The data were collected during 1100+ hours of fieldwork from April 2012 to July 2013. The participant observations were done in classrooms, after-school programs, field trips, and other organizing efforts that youth engaged in as participants in community-school sponsored activities. I traveled out of the city and state with stu-dents during the course of the study. Semi-structured interviews with the principal, the executive director of community organization, and its staff members, teachers, and youth were conducted. The unit of analysis, though, was the youth. Overall, I interviewed 40 youth from across academic tracks, who were involved in multiple after-school programs provided through the community-school partnership, in order to deepen the understanding of how they experience identity in the community school.

Given that this study is framed as a critical ethnography, with attention to youth perceptions and experiences of identity, I did not presume their ethnic identities at the outset of the study. Rather, this study considers identity as a process, “a process that is on-going,” yielding multi-layered understandings of identities as they emerge through the interaction of youth, the community organization, and the school (Yon, 2000, p. 13). To analyze the data, I drew on the research literature on identity and the conceptual framework as well as analytic strategies useful in qualitative data analysis (LeCompte & Schensul, 2010). Knowing that research literature discusses racial and ethnic identification processes and skin color as identity markers (Fergus, 2009), I used the research literature to analyze the data at multiple stages; specifi-


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cally, I considered moments when youth experienced tension around perceptions of their racial or ethnic identity by teachers and how teachers “assumed stuff” about the youth based on their looks. In addition, I went through two phases of coding and looked for patterns across the 1100 pages of field notes and the interviews (Creswell, 2004; Merriam, 2009; Saldaña, 2013).

I used a narrative analysis technique to build the story around these three female youth in this chapter (Coulter & Smith, 2009). Narrative analyses, for instance, “rely on stories as a way of knowing [and are] framed and rendered through an analytical process that is artistic as well as rigorous” (Coulter & Smith, 2009, p. 577). Further, the interpretations of participants and the themes I discovered provide the foundation for the narrative of the larger ethnography, and excerpts from youth interviews are reported here. The first theme that is discussed later in the chapter is “Female Youth Experiences of Racial and Ethnic Identity” because I found that the three females in this chapter all experienced their racial and ethnic identity differently, but in ways that resisted the model minority stereotype applied to Asian immigrant students. The second theme that is discussed is “I Hate My Own Race” as it emerged across youth interviews and participant observations in the study.

Setting

The setting for the study was a community on the southwest side of Chicago. Redwood Park Council (RPC) is the community organization that is partnered with O’Donnell High School (both of which are pseudonyms). The Redwood Park community is a low-income, working class neighborhood. The ethnic composition of the community has changed considerably in the last 20 years as it moved from a neighborhood of Irish, Polish, and German immigrants to Latino immigrants. At the time of the study (2012-2013), the community had slightly fewer than 50,000 residents and was about 85% Hispanic. Many of these residents were undocumented immigrant families, allowing many opportunities for the youth to learn about and critique various immigration reform efforts at national and local levels through after-school programs as well as other organizing opportunities. I learned, however, that “[i]t’s not just Latinos there [at O’Donnell]; we got Asians, too,” as one youth explained to me during my first days at O’Donnell.

O’Donnell High School is a large, urban Chicago public school. As of 2012-2013, there were 2,575 students enrolled at O’Donnell with about a 50% dropout rate. The racial and ethnic distribution at O’Donnell is approximately 87% Hispanic, 8% Asian (mostly of Chinese heritage), 3% Caucasian, and 2% African American. Many of the youth in the study, and the three females featured in this chapter, participated in after-school programs through the community-school partnership. As will be explained, these three youth (among the 40 others in the study) saw the


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value in after-school programs because they were a space to explore social and cultural identities. In the last five years, the number of Asian immigrant students has increased at O’Donnell, creating a unique school context for youth such as the females in this chapter to make sense of their identity and educational experience.

EDUCATIONAL NARRATIVES

Female Youth Experiences of Racial and Ethnic Identity

To address the first research question, this section focuses on three female youth who attempt to resist the model minority stereotype. The first research question is: How do female youth—perceived and stereotyped as model minorities by school staff—identify racially and ethnically? The three narratives provide the “talking back” to the model minority racial epithet and the ways it positions youth at O’Donnell (Conchas & Pérez, 2003). The first question asks how the female youth perceived their racial and ethnic identity in relation to how teachers and other adults in the school stereotyped them. This question grew out of curiosity when the experience as an ethnographer at O’Donnell revealed that the small population of Asian stu-dents was aware of the model minority stereotype and mostly benefitted from such a stereotype academically by being placed in higher academic tracks in the school.

Drawing on responses from Shaye, Eli, and Yessy, we observe the conflict in this process of racialization. For these youth, caught between discourses of Asianness, Chineseness, and Latino/a-ness and the experiences of each those groups, their daily lives in school are about more than acquiring academic skills and content. Their daily lives are indicative of a tenuous social, cultural, political struggle for various immigrant groups in their communities. These youth have to navigate a contested racial terrain, often shedding and taking on new identities simultaneously across racially and culturally imbued spaces. The table below reflects the overall view of how these three females identify, and then the section discusses their in-depth process of racial or ethnic identification.

Table 1. Youth perspectives on racial and ethnic identity

Youth Participant Self-Articulated Experience of Racial and Ethnic Identity

Shaye I hate my own race. My face is Chinese, but I am not what is stereotypically Chinese or Asian

Eli I don’t have to worry about “who am I?” in after-school programs. I look Chinese, but I feel Latina.

Yessy Languages have created my bicultural identities, allowing me to identify myself as a mix of both my Chinese and Panamanian culture.


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In each of the responses to the question about their racial and ethnic identity, these female youth grapple with what it means to “look Chinese,” but feel like something else. In the first response, Shaye experienced frustration with how the school perceives her Asianness. She said, “The school defines an Asian pretty ste-reotypically. Teachers just think they’re smart” (Interview, February, 2013). Over the course of the ethnography, I observed Shaye’s frustration. She said, “The only thing that seems Chinese is my face.” She shared her perspective on her racial and ethnic identity:

I describe myself as Chinese American. Even though I may not speak Chinese or observe as many Chinese traditions as closely as some of my friends, I am still Chi-nese. The one thing that proves that I am Chinese is my face, and that is not changing anytime soon! The other Chinese people treat me unfairly because of my lack of knowledge of the language. Also, it can be because I was born here and I don’t fit in with the kids that came from China also known as FOBS (fresh of the boat), nor do I fit in with the group that was born here. I am in this secluded group that many people don’t belong to. To them the only thing that seems Chinese is my face. They think everything about me is American. My name, my customs, my family traditions, my parents knowing English, not eating rice every day, these are things that make me not stereotypically Chinese. Anything you could imagine has come across of why I am “American” and don’t fit stereotypes of Chinese or Asian. I am in IB, but I am not super smart. I have mostly A’s and B’s, so I sorta fit the model minority stereotype of Asians, but I still don’t feel Chinese. (Interview, February 5, 2013)

Shaye illustrates the lived experience of race. She understands the components of what it might mean to be Chinese, and she does not fit those molds but knows she still has a face that makes her look Chinese. This process is important because the markers of Asianness or Chineseness are different from her personal identifi-cation of race. Throughout the interview and my observations of Shaye in classes, she grapples with what it means to be identified or categorized as a certain race or ethnicity, and to have assumptions and expectations attached to such categorization.

The second female youth in this chapter is Eli. Eli’s narrative speaks to the complexity of her racial and ethnic identity. She received some of her education in China and then attended private school in Panama. At the time of the study, she said she had only been in the U.S. for three years. The purpose is to offer up the ways in which Eli identifies racially and ethnically and to demonstrate the complexity that often underlies the experiences of “Asian” immigrant youth. Eli said,

I’m still not sure what to call myself but most likely I would tell people that my na-tionality is Panamanian because I lived there for almost eleven years and that I’m


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also Chinese because my parents were born in China. I went to boarding school in China because my parents wanted me to be disciplined in Chinese culture. I have this mixed ethnic history, which is sometimes really amazing but at times really con-fusing because sometimes I don’t know how I am supposed to act or what cultural rules to follow. It is fun to know Chinese culture because in the end it is where my descendants came from. I look Chinese, and people assume that’s my race, but I feel Latina here at O’Donnell. (Interview, May 23, 2013)

Eli’s explanation of her mixed cultural heritage is something she grapples with. She tells me her boyfriend is a “Latino.” Eli “feels Latina” because she takes Span-ish courses and has the opportunity to interact with Latino culture through her relationship with her boyfriend and through the predominantly Latino population at O’Donnell. Eli is not angered by her mixed history, but she still experiences conflict with regard to racial and ethnic identification.

The third female in this chapter is Yessy. Yessy is the sister of Eli and has similar struggles with her racial and ethnic identity, but much like Eli, Yessy embraces the struggle about what she calls her “bicultural identities.” Her experience of racial and ethnic identity is in conflict with the ways the school positions her. She does not feel that she lives up to the model minority stereotype, in part because she thinks “[y]ou really have to be able to speak the language” to be considered smart at O’Donnell. She understands that O’Donnell is composed of 100% immigrants, and those that can speak English are, in her eyes, privileged in the school. She connects writing and the ability to write and speak in English to positive academic experiences at O’Donnell. She said,

I feel like a mix. My Chinese roots are stronger, but it’s a mix. My sister is more Western, though; she only speaks English and Spanish and hangs out with Latinos. I hang onto both races. My parents are more traditional and Chinese. They were born in China, and immigrated to Panama. But my sister and I were born and raised in Panama. I went back to China for part of middle school. In Panama and in China I learned English. In Panama, they teach English better in private schools, so other students like my friend Dominique she was in rural Ecuador and did not know English as well as me. At O’Donnell, there are more Asian students lately, but it is mostly Latinos. I feel like I have the choice of cultural identity outside of school, but inside school it’s just different. Sometimes I wish there were more whites because then I could practice speaking English. I want to have both identities though, like I said. I feel more Chinese than Latina, but like I said, I work to learn about Chinese culture and maintain my roots with it. It’s hard with race you know? (Interview, June 5, 2013)


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Yessy’s complex understanding of her racial and ethnic identity resists any un-derstanding of a monolithic Asian identity. She raises the issue, however, of living somewhere in between a Chinese and a Panamanian identity while also wishing that “there were more white kids” at O’Donnell so that she could practice her English. The next section explores the ways in which the racial logic operates at O’Donnell and positions Asian students as model minorities and how these three youth respond to the racial logic of the school. I then discuss the implications of this in relation to the concept of racialized epithet as applied to the model minority stereotype.

“I HATE MY OWN RACE; TEACHERS JUST THINK WE’RE SMART”: THE RACIAL LOGIC AT O’DONNELL

To address the second and third exploratory research questions, this section uses the narratives and experiences of Shaye, Eli, and Yessy to understand 1) how O’Donnell as a school positions them based on perceptions of their racial and ethnic identity markers, and 2) how these youth explore other socio-cultural identities beyond what the school thinks they are or should be. Field notes and interview data provide the foundation for youth experiences of O’Donnell’s racial logic.

As mentioned above, a racial logic is the way people talk about and think about race. Lewis’ (2004) work problematizes the ignorance about the ways in which race operates through discourse and materializes in institutional practices in schools. The racial logic at O’Donnell is complex because the school is approximately 87% Hispanic while about 8% Asian with a handful of African American and Caucasian students. Out of the 200 adults in the building, 90% are white. The difference between teachers and students at the school is important because teachers’ perceptions of student ability are informed by their racial ideologies, even when the teachers said, “Race doesn’t matter here. How could it? Most of the students aren’t white.” Lewis (2001) argues that often schools and the people working in them ignore race itself as a product and process of school. In addition, for race to be important it does not have to be explicitly discussed. A racial logic can and often does operate even in the most subtle ways. The racial logic at O’Donnell was revealed in my conversations with teachers and other adults in the building.

What is the racial logic at O’Donnell, and how does it position Asian students in particular? The racial logic functions at the school level and at the individual classroom level at O’Donnell. The first level of a racial logic occurs at the school level through the tracking practices in the school. Scholars in sociology of educa-tion have discussed at length the ways in which schools structure inequality and produce racial inequality inside schools (Oakes, 2007). Knowing that O’Donnell is comprised largely of Latino or Hispanic students, it was interesting to learn that


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Asian students were over-represented in the International Baccalaureate (the highest academic track) cohort because “teachers just think they are smart,” students said. There was an assumption circulating at O’Donnell that Asian immigrants were just “different” from Latino immigrants, and so, as one teacher told me, “They just tend to get put into International Baccalaureate (IB) program.” While I am highlighting key moments where race and ethnicity interacted with the school sorting processes in the larger project, for purposes of this chapter I note that the process by which students were sorted into academic tracks at O’Donnell was largely based on teacher perceptions of student ability and teachers’ racialized ideologies.

The second level that this research observed was at the classroom level.3 At the classroom level, a feature of the racial logic at O’Donnell was that students in the IB program (n=50: 42 juniors, including Shaye, and eight seniors) felt stereotyped. Shaye is also the only one in IB featured in this chapter. This occurred for both Asians and Latinos. Latinos felt negatively stereotyped as though they were not capable of doing the work of an IB student when compared to Asian students in IB. As one teacher during a classroom observation said to a Latino male student while pointing to Shaye, “Christian, do what Shaye does. Be like her.” Shaye in that moment was diligently writing down notes.

Tension specifically arose when one teacher persistently referred to the Asian students in the IB Theory of Knowledge class—a course that is restricted from non-IB students—as “knowing what to do or getting a 4.60 GPA and being really smart.” Her lack of including Latino students in this classification is a sign of the racial logic and of the “implicit racial message that teachers convey in schools” when they categorize and assess Asian students as “different” from other immigrant or minority groups (Lewis, 2001, p. 792). During class discussion, Shaye responded to this by exclaiming, “I hate my own race; there are so many stereotypes that come along with being Chinese like being smart” (Field notes, November 19, 2012). The teacher laughed at the student and proceeded throughout my time at O’Donnell to refer to her as the “self-hating Chinese girl,” and made her sit with the other Chi-nese/Asian females in the course, referring to them as the “Chinese sorority sitting in the back of the room.” The teacher did not acknowledge that the student did not want to have stereotypes circulating around her racial marker of Chinese-ness since she did not “feel Chinese,” as she told me in our interview (Interview, February 5, 2013). Below is an excerpt from field notes that illustrate the second way the racial logic at O’Donnell was revealed at the classroom level:

T: I’ve seen every racial or ethnic group talk shit about every other racial or ethnic group.

S1: I hate when people say they’re not racist; everybody’s racist.


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Shaye: I hate my own race [Chinese]. Teachers just always think we’re smart, and they expect things from you that aren’t true. It doesn’t matter if you feel Asian or Chinese or whatever at this school. It’s like decided for you what you are.

T: We have a self-hating Chinese girl here [laughs; some students in the class laugh, too. Students look toward Shaye; Shaye drops her head toward the floor].

Shaye: I don’t feel Chinese and I don’t know why you’re . . . [mumbles this in the back corner near where I’m sitting]. (Field Notes, November, 19, 212)

Student 1’s comment that “everybody’s racist” went unacknowledged by the teacher, and then as I observed Shaye in the back of the room experiencing frustration, the teacher seemed to target her. The teacher was laughing and seemed to assume that this experience was humorous for Shaye and other students in the class without recognizing Shaye’s frustration and discomfort with being referred to through the assumptions of a model minority stereotype. On the one hand, Shaye had been used as a model minority when compared to other Latino students by the teacher in the class, to her discomfort, when the teacher said to Christian to “be like her,” sug-gesting that Shaye’s behaviors and actions were aligned with what it meant to be a good, IB student in that particular school. When Shaye finally reached a boiling point and blurted out, “I hate my own race” in the classroom, some students nervously laughed and some fell silent. The teacher laughed at Shaye and then continued to refer to her throughout the year as “the self-hating Chinese girl.”

I engaged in many conversations with this teacher throughout the year and also conducted a formal semi-structured interview. She apologized to me for Shaye’s remarks, which struck me as odd. She went on to explain to me that “O’Donnell students, especially the Latinos, are so deeply embedded in their cultural beliefs and upbringings that they don’t see their comments as racist. They also live in a homogenous community, so they are constantly around other poor, ghetto Latinos” (Interview, December 18, 2012). The point here is that for the teacher, Latinos talking “shit” about other racial groups was inappropriate but also attributed to a feature of being in the “poor, ghetto Latino” culture. The teacher thought Latinos’ perceptions of race were not particularly valuable in the classroom, and it was almost expected that Latinos would make racist comments because that’s just who they are as “poor, ghetto Latinos.” On the other hand, Shaye as the model minority was not nurtured in the classroom space to express her concerns and frustrations over what it was like to be Asian or Chinese because the teacher had determined that to be Asian or Chinese was a model; they were the model minority as the “Chinese sorority in the classroom,” a phrase that this teacher used to refer to Shay and her two girlfriends in the class.


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Considering the racial logic at O’Donnell and the ways in which the model mi-nority functioned as a racialized epithet, I wanted to deepen the understanding of the female youth experience. Using Shaye’s and Yessy’s experiences, I considered their responses to the school’s racial logic and the racialized epithet of the model minority. Shaye describes her experience as a student at O’Donnell. She said,

I don’t feel discriminated against at O’Donnell, but I definitely feel stereotyped as an Asian and as Chinese. I’m not sure if it would be a different answer if I didn’t know English and wasn’t born here. Asians are less targeted in some ways because we aren’t considered to be illegally here as much as people see the Latinos in the community, and we are mostly in IB. Honestly, I have been treated unfairly by my own race. I have been looked down upon by my own race more times than I can count, and I have had my race misunderstood in school, but not as bad as Latinos in the school. Teachers are always shocked when they hear me speak Spanish and that I don’t speak Chinese. It’s hard sometimes. I do get frustrated because it’s like they don’t care how it makes us feel when they assume we are supposed to be a certain way because we are Chinese. I was really mad that day I said I hate my own race. It’s not that I hate being Chinese—like I said, my face is Chinese—but I just don’t feel Chinese. I don’t celebrate the Chinese New Year or speak the language. I’m Chinese, but I feel Latina if I had to choose (Interview, June, 3, 2013).

Yessy did not experience the level of frustration that Shaye did, but Yessy’s comments suggest that she still experiences confusion and tension when it comes to her “bicultural identity.” She explained,

At O’Donnell I wish there were more white people at our school. I can’t practice my English. There’s a lot of Latinos, and I speak Spanish with them, and it’s fine. I’m used to it. I probably speak more Spanish than Chinese, but I do know both languages fluently. I do have some Chinese friends. If you don’t speak English in school, there’s racism. We have Chinese girls in the school, and they only like to speak Chinese or they don’t really speak at all. It’s a cultural thing. They are disciplined to be good students. I remember this from when I was in school in China. I speak Chinese, and I speak Spanish, and I wish I could practice my English. (Interview, June 6, 2013).

The educational narratives in this section of the chapter capture how female youth resist the model minority stereotype in two ways. First, I offered their per-spectives on their racial and ethnic identity. Shaye, Eli, and Yessy in different ways expressed concern, confusion, joy, and contradictory feelings over their Asianness and Chinesesness. Their narratives provide the “talking back” to the ways in which racialized epithets condition discourse (Chae, 2004; Embrick & Henricks, 2013).


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Second, their comments from interviews provide a counter narrative to the racial logic at O’Donnell that seeks to perpetuate the model minority in both explicit and implicit ways. The model minority is a stereotype that fails to understand and elucidate the experiences of these female youth, and it fails to account for the rich, mixed cultural and racial/ethnic experiences that these three females do bring with them into the school. In addition, the racial logic at O’Donnell also maintains the model minority stereotype as a racialized epithet, e.g., when it was observed that Latino students were compared unfairly to Asian students in particular classes such as the IB class discussed in this chapter.

“I DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT ‘WHO AM I?’ IN AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMS”: NEGOTIATING IDENTITIES IN AFTER-SCHOOL SPACES

The third exploratory research question asks where and how students such as Shaye, Eli, and Yessy explore other identities as they seek to escape the ways the school positions and identifies them racially and ethnically. Each of the three females in this chapter expressed that after-school programs offered at the community school were spaces where they could explore socio-cultural identities. For instance, Eli said,

I joined Social Justice Club because I wanted to be involved in a big project like going to New Orleans over spring break in which I could help out the community there and at the same time work with my peers. I wanted to make a difference and discover different problems that the U.S. has, and it didn’t matter if I picked to be Chinese or Latina or whatever; we were just a community of social justice. (Inter-view, May 23, 2013)

Similarly, Yessy expressed that her participation in an after-school program Model United Nations allowed her to find her “Latino” friends, and together they were “just all there and happy to be a part of a club.” She said that the racial and ethnic identities of people were not the primary way people defined each other as is the case inside the school. Yessy said, “In school, you have your Latinos mostly and then Asians; Asians are in more classes together, and so when you try to cross groups it’s hard. Like me, I like to hang onto both, but my sister, Eli, she’s more Latina. But after school it is just the club and us.” Her comments, along with Eli’s, suggest that after-school programs are a space where students can explore other identities that are not conditioned by racial and ethnic identity markers.

Additionally, Eli said, “At first I thought, ‘Oh it’s a lot of Mexicans only in after-school programs,’ but like I knew that coming in. I really don’t think it phases me.


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I actually like that there’s different races. You know. We don’t all have to just talk about our races or ethnicities. We are there as youth.” Both Eli and Yessy were able to participate in after-school programs while Shaye expressed that her academic status as an IB student limited her ability to participate in after-school programs, mentioning that “most of the IB students are just in after-school programs like ACT prep but not in social things.” The larger study addressed this issue in more depth. In each of the 40 youth interviews I conducted, youth expressed that participation in after-school programs allowed them to pursue social identities that ultimately led to their feeling of belonging. The school positioned immigrant youth in ways that essentialized them, and failed to account for the ways in which youth experience positive social and culture identities on their own terms.

IMPLICATIONS

The model minority stereotype functions as a racialized epithet through daily inter-actions and everyday discourse, e.g., teachers laughing about having a “self-hating Chinese girl” such as Shaye in this study. Racialized discourse and stereotyping are made normative aspects of classroom discourse. According to race scholars, epithets and seemingly harmless stereotypes—or moments when teachers and youth laugh about “hating” one’s own race in response to a teacher assuming that “Asian kids are just smart”—reproduce inequitable, racialized orders in schools that mirror the larger society. Thus, these seemingly small interactions among students and teachers are symbolic of larger power relations that exist and sustain “racial antagonism” (Bonilla-Silva, 2001; Embrick & Henricks, 2013, p. 200).

Exposing the model minority stereotype as a racialized epithet challenges re-searchers and policy makers to consider the differential educational experiences and the consequences of perpetuating such a stereotype. Conceptualizing the model minority stereotype as another type of racialized epithet is a starting point that seeks to open up the ways in which the model minority functions to “sustain racial an-tagonism” and consequently “reproduces an inequitable racial order” (p. 199). This study’s ethnographic investigation of institutional processes in the schools revealed the ways in which the model minority as a racialized epithet negatively impacted female “Asian” youth who “look Chinese” but feel like something else. This study locates the model minority stereotype as a racialized epithet in the racial logic in the school. Data suggests that the racial logic operates at the school level as well as the classroom level.

Additionally, using youth narratives provides responses to structural processes that sustain the racial logic at O’Donnell. This study offers an alternative, cultural studies model of exploring the ways in which immigrant youth experience tension


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within their racial/ethnic identity formation, the ways in which teachers and other agents of the school reify stereotypes around the model minority construction, and the conflict that youth endure as a result of the ascription process of racial/ethnic identity and its connection to academic achievement. By offering youth voice and un-silencing their internal struggles around racialized identity struggles in schools, this research attempted to dismantle the dominant discourse perpetuated in the research literature on the model minority stereotype.

CONCLUSION

This chapter explored three questions that spoke to the ways female youth identified racially and ethnically, the ways the racial logic of the school positioned these female youth and their responses to and conflict with such positioning, and the ways that youth attempted to explore their socio-cultural identities in after-school programs. The narratives of these female youth provided the lived experience of racial identity ascription processes. Alternative spaces such as after-school programs and commu-nity organizing efforts are promising avenues for youth to “grab power” and speak out against the differential educational experiences of the immigrant students at the school. These alternative spaces enable youth to articulate and make sense of the contradictory process of identity formation. Through a cultural study of immigrant youth identity, with attention to fluid models of identity (Gee, 2001; Ngo, 2010), we can begin to dismantle the model minority stereotype by insisting that we move beyond ascription of identity. It is through the counter-narratives of youth that we can critique dominant discourses around immigrant groups.

This chapter’s data challenge education researchers and policy-makers to re-position youth, productively, beyond the racialized discourse that limits their identity formation. We instead need to continue to create structures that enable spaces for youth to explore social and cultural identities that are recognized as valid by schools. Offering the voices of youth as they discuss their desires and experiences for con-tradictory identities while they travel and move across social spaces is one way that qualitative ethnographic inquiry contributes to understanding youth experiences of race and marginalization in schools and communities. And we need to acknowledge the desires of youth if they “feel Latina,” and allow spaces for youth explore the hybridity and multiplicity of identity, particularly by recognizing that culture and cultural identity are not “closed” but rather informed by multiple meanings and experiences (Bhabha, 1994; Hall, 1990, 1996; Ngo, 2010). Much as Giroux (1998) states, “Education works best when those experiences that shape and penetrate one’s lived reality are jolted, unsettled, and made the object of critical analysis” (p. 132). Viewing the model minority stereotype as a racialized epithet and exposing the


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racial logic that is often too ever-present in schools in low-income communities of color is an attempt to “jolt” and “unsettle” the conversation about the model minor-ity stereotype and build upon youth experiences and the lived experiences of race.

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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

Critical Ethnography: A methodological approach that enables the researcher to reflect on his/her identity, ideology, positioning, and power within the context of research, to critique systems of oppression, and to authentically represents the voices of marginalized groups through writing the ethnographic text.

Cultural-Ecological Theory: This is a framework in educational sociology/anthropology that has been used to explain differential academic achievement of minority groups as compared to non-minority groups. The framework relies on two tenets that explain racial differences in achievement: (a) societal and school forces (ecological) and (b) community and individual-level forces (cultural).

Identity Ascription: The process of externally imposing identities that often involves stereotyping.

Involuntary Minorities: This group includes those whose minority position is a result of historical marginalization, colonization, or forced migration, i.e., slavery. This group is said to have a resistant or oppositional approach to the host society


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and its institutions (e.g. schools) because they see the institution of school as set up to serve the dominant class in the host society. This group is judged to be consistent academic failures due to their oppositional view of school.

Racial/Ethnic Identity Ascription: In research on education, this can refer to the ways in which schools assign or categorize students influenced by underlying racial ideologies and perceptions of students’ abilities. The ways in which schools and agents of schooling identify students based on race that may or may not match up with students’ own self-identifications.

Racial Logic: Broadly speaking, racial logic can be understood as the way people think about and talk about race. A racial logic emphasizes racial identity markers (e.g. skin color) in order to help individuals perceive and interpret the world. This logic is often rooted in assumptions of racial differences and racial hierarchies.

Segmented Assimilation: Segmented assimilation theory accepts the basic premises of the cultural-ecological theory (CET) initiated by Signithia Fordham and John Ogbu in their seminal 1986 article “Black Students’ School Success: Coping with the ‘Burden of “Acting White”’” published in The Urban Review. This impor-tant article examined reasons why minority groups experience a disproportionate amount of school failure. The CET argues that native, involuntary minorities have an oppositional identity that resists conforming to behaviors aligned with school success, and proximity to these native, involuntary minorities threatens academic achievement for voluntary minorities. Scholars argue that segmented assimilation explains how new immigrant students of color have several trajectories of cultural adaptation. They offer three possible modes of identification: 1) identify with the dominant group in host society, 2) identify with the native minority underclass, or 3) identify with their own ethnic communities. The critique of this theory of assimilation is that it identifies structural processes that different racial/ethnic mi-nority groups undergo toward either upward or downward mobility without paying sufficient attention to micro-level processes and socio-cultural identities within/across such groups.

Voluntary Minorities: This group includes immigrants that arrive to a host country by choice. This group assimilates and values the host society and its institu-tions. This group is judged to be more likely to experience academic achievement.

ENDNOTES

1 In the scholarly literature, racial epithet and racialized epithet are used inter-changeably. In this chapter, I mostly use racialized epithet.

2 This project also specifically breaks away from previous scholarship on the educational achievement of minorities from a cultural-deficit model and


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framework. This model dominates sociology of education literature on minority youth identity as it relates to academic achievement, positing that non-white students adopt “oppositional” identities and associate doing well in school with “acting white” (Carter, 2005; Fordham, 1988; Fordham & Ogbu, 1978).

3 While field notes from across classroom subjects and levels revealed the school’s racial logic, I focus in on field notes from the International Baccalau-reate (IB) class that Shaye was in as she is one of the main participants in this chapter. Shaye is also the only IB student out of the three females discussed in the chapter.

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