Whiteness and Asian American Educational Experiences: Combating Schooling as a Neocolonial Apparatus

• In Event: Narrowing the Distance: Critical Praxis With Asian Pacific Americans and Education

Abstract

This paper examines the affects of whiteness on Asian American students’ educational experiences. Although educational research suggests that Asian American students have attained “success” in higher education vis-à-vis the model minority paradigm (Buenavista et al., 2009), a critical analysis is needed to demythologize the paradigm prescribed to ethnically diverse Asian American students. Particularly in this paper, our first objective is to contextualize the relationship between whiteness and the neo-colonial schooling apparatus—the systemic and deliberate reinforcement of the colonial condition (Tintiangco-Cubales, 2011). This relationship will serve as a theoretical framework that guide this paper. Secondly, we situate our paper within the context of suburban schooling, where whiteness and the neo-colonial schooling apparatus delimit Asian American students’ ethnic identity formation. Finally, we locate how “critical” Asian American students and educators have navigated and negotiated race within and around the academic terrain.

The tension between colonialism’s residual effects and schooling is present for many
Asian American students ( Buenavista, et al. 2009; Constantino, 1987;Tintiangco-Cubales, et al. 2010). Coupled with this tension are the “hidden” educational goals that maintain and promote a hegemonic set of values and sensibilities that support whiteness. For this reason, suburban schools provide an emergent site of inquiry that detail how whiteness and schooling interact in a manner that is “subtractive” and neither promotes nor celebrates Asian American educational experiences beyond an apolitical and multiculturalist mentioning.

Giroux suggests students [of color and white] are “offered a space marked by dialogue and critique in which they can engage, challenge, and rearticulate their positions by analyzing the material realities and social relations of racism” (Giroux, 1997). For Asian American students to critically analyze their lived realities within the context of schooling, we provide insight toward understanding the connectivity between their colonial histories and the operationalization of neo-colonial schooling. Additionally, it is imperative for educators to understand the context in which racialized paradigms and systemic apparatuses affect Asian American students.

Through semi-structured interviews and focus groups with Asian American college students that have attended suburban schools for a majority of their schooling, we uncover the multiple maneuverings of whiteness and the neo-colonial schooling apparatus on Asian American students. We also look at how critical students and educators apply Freire’s notion of praxis to develop “their capacity to confront real-world problems that face them and their community” to create transformative and liberatory spaces and practices that combat schooling as a neo-colonial apparatus.

Authors

• Edward Ryan Curammeng, University of California - Los Angeles

• Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, San Francisco State University