Critiquing Empire Through Desirability: 40 Years of Filipinx Americans and Educational Research

• In Event: Transformative Education for Asian Pacific America: Bridging Filipinx American Studies and Educational Research

Abstract

Objectives/Research Questions/Theory
Filipinx Americans, the second-largest Asian American group, remain underexamined within educational research. We investigated how Filipinx Americans are studied, positioned, and situated in U.S. educational research over a 40 year period (1980-2020). We engaged in a semi-systematic review to uncover prominent themes, patterns and trends. Our inquiry includes:
1. How are Filipinx Americans portrayed in educational research?
2. To what extent does empire as an analytic and a desire-based framing illuminate the context, needs and capabilities of Filipinx Americans?
3. What lessons can be drawn from educational research that utilizes Filipinx American students as a subject group?
Our paper uses empire as an analytic and a desire-based framework. Coloma (2013) defines empire as “construed heuristically as a geopolitical entity and as an enactment of power” (p. 641). Coloma asserts that the U.S. education of racialized minorities relates to the continued legacy and history of empire, an “enactment of power [that] works in conjunction with imperialism and colonialism” (p. 641). We situate empire within the historical and current postcolonial relationship between the U.S. and the Philippines. Our analytical lens involves a re-visioning of researching our communities away from the perception of disenfranchised communities as broken. Tuck (2013) challenges researchers to heed from conducting research on minoritized communities from a “damage-centered” approach (p. 422). The main tenets of damage-centered research include: survivance; re-vision our theories of change; establishing tribal and community human research ethics guidelines; and the creation of mutually beneficial roles for academic researchers in community research.

Methods/Sources
In our semi-systematic review yielded 74 peer reviewed articles we collected data primarily through the EBSCO database. We examined how the literature has progressed over time, and mapped the field of educational research on Filipinx American students. We employed an Open Coding approach (Saldaña, 2012) and returned to the research questions guiding our review to establish a coding schema. All codes and notes were kept in a central shared database. The coding schema included: assimilation; critical pedagogy; culturally relevant; whiteness; empire.

Findings/Significance
There exist several patterns relative to the quantitative production of Filipinx American educational scholarship. The year 2008 reflected a total of 8 peer-reviewed articles, the highest number published in the 40-year period; the second highest in 2016 with a total of 6 and 2001, 2006, and 2009 tied at 5 published in a year. There were also 16 out of the 40 years where no peer-reviewed articles were published. Our analysis suggests that researchers often position Filipinx Americans relative to whiteness or utilize critical educational framings to interrogate ways they are racialized. We found two overarching themes. The first theme, “whiteness as proximity,” includes subthemes: centering whiteness, tropes of whiteness and controlling for whiteness. Our second theme, utilizing “critical educational interventions,” includes: power and structures, critical pedagogy, and cultural responsiveness. We offer implications for future research focused on Filipinx Americans and minoritized groups and conclude discussion about the necessity for desirability and empire as a lens for future educational research.

Authors

• Edward R. Curammeng, California State University - Dominguez Hills

• Xavier Hernandez, University of California - Irvine

• Dina C. Maramba, Claremont Graduate University