Empowerment Through Critical Race Consciousness

• In Event: 72.020 - Education Expanded: Youth Learning Places and Youthspaces

Abstract

In “Empowerment through critical race consciousness,” the second panelist examines the empowering impact of critical race consciousness for a group of Hmong American undergraduates at a Midwestern PWI in which Hmong Americans constitute the largest racial minority. In particular, this research investigates the power of self-definition in the face of imposed negative racialization. The author utilizes critical race theory in education (Lynn & Dixson, 2013) to analyze how Hmong American participants became empowered to name and resist institutional racism after becoming educated about institutional racism, race as an ideology, and other concepts tied to critical race theory (CRT). Twenty-five Hmong American undergraduates were interviewed individually or in focus groups, depending on student preferences, between 2012-2014. These interviews were conducted by the author, a White female faculty member and faculty advisor to a Hmong American student organization, and an Indian American male colleague who served as advisor to the same organization. Interviews were approximately one hour in length. Participants were selected based upon their prior work on campus as anti-racism student activists.
Most of the Hmong American participants either took a class on CRT or engaged in self-education through peer discussion, conference attendance, or other educational opportunities focused on race. The students’ new knowledge of CRT provided the foundation for critical race consciousness, which in turn became the key to naming their experiences and imposed racial identities as racial rather than as “cultural difference” or “culture clash” (Ngo, 2008). This shift from viewing their experiences through a cultural deficit lens and into a critical understanding of race and racism proved transformative for these youth (DePouw, 2012).
Prior to adopting a critical race consciousness, student participants reported viewing the world through the lens of what they now recognize as internalized racism against Hmong Americans and other people of color. Their internalized racism resulting in deep shame about almost everything related to Hmong language and culture as well as a belief that “blending in” through adoption of perceived White cultural norms, including anti-Black racism, was important. These messages were communicated to Hmong American students through years of school, peer, and community socialization in which they were targeted by cultural racism (Bonilla-Silva, 2006) - racism that focused on cultural markers such as language, religious practice, or food rather than biological markers. Most of the students reported growing up in majority White rural or small town regions in the Midwest - areas in which they were often either rendered invisible in school or treated as “ethnic informants” for their White teachers and peers (Carter-Andrews, 2012).
Students’ shift into critical race consciousness helped them to resist internalized racism as well as institutional exploitation. Students worked to develop navigational skills to take ownership over important university/public spaces. Further, students reported that they also felt empowered to push for substantive Hmong culture/language representation in university curriculum. Critical race consciousness, then, served two functions: students were better able to name their experiences, including internalized racism, and more actively embraced Hmong language and culture because of diminished internalized racism.

Author

• Christin A. DePouw, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay