Asian Student Loan Borrowers in Anti-Black Student Loan Systems: Review of Research and Public Discourse

• In Event: Reframing Asian American Racialization and Interrogating the Specificity of Anti-Blackness

Abstract

Purposes. Student loan debt is inequitably distributed by race, particularly for Black borrowers (Houle & Addo, 2019). Mustaffa and Davis (2021) identify anti-Black logics that maintain the exploitation of Black borrowers, such as using Black people’s desires for education to attain “more mobility and autonomy,” and entrapping Black borrowers into the system by preventing access to financial alternatives (p. 9). Within this system, non-Black racially minoritized borrowers are also implicated, often experiencing differential treatment. Asians/Asian American borrowers, for instance, are perceived as “not needing” loans. Viewed as model minorities and more economically affluent, Asians/Asian Americans are believed to be less likely to take student loans. Yet Asians are a diverse group, and these perceptions may leave many who may need financial assistance without resources.


In this study, I focus on Asians/Asian American borrowers, and ask: What are the experiences of Asian/Asian American borrowers within an anti-Black loan system? How does the racialization of Asian/Asian American borrowers contribute to their experiences in borrowing and repaying? How do Asian/Asian Americans use their status as “honorary whites” and “proxy privileges” (Liu, 2017) in this system?


Framework. This review of literature is grounded in AsianCrit, theories of anti-Blackness, and Racial Capitalism. AsianCrit addresses how Asians/Asian Americans are framed as “model minorities,” believed to be universally successful despite racism (Chao et al., 2010). Asians/Asian Americans are also racialized as “perpetual foreigners,” and “yellow perils” (Kim, 1998), thus marking Asian/Asian Americans as “other” and pitted against other racial groups (Poon et al., 2016). Theories of anti-Blackness (Vargas, 2018) illuminates how Black people are dehumanized in racial ecologies. Combined with Robinson’s (2000) conceptualization of Racial Capitalism, this framing illuminates the inequities rooted in anti-Blackness that exploits Black and non-Black borrowers of Color.


Methods. Grounded in interrogations of anti-Blackness, I conducted a systematic review of literature from 2013-2023 on racialized minoritized student loan borrowers. I looked for the racial framing of and underlying discourses on Asian/Asian American borrowers. I present two themes on Asian/Asian Americans borrowing and repayment.


Findings. Asian/Asian American borrowers are either less likely to borrow due to their higher wealth (MMM) or more likely to be debt averse because of immigrant populations’ use of unbanked systems (perpetual foreigners) (Teranishi et al., 2009). These tropes translate into policies that oversimplify Asian/Asian American borrowers’ needs. Conversely, Black students are most likely to borrow (Addo et al., 2016), least likely to complete (Goldrick-Rab et al, 2014), and most likely to default (Jackson & Williams, 2022). These outcomes result from a larger student loan system that exploits Black borrowers in the name of capitalism (Mustaffa & Davis, 2021).


Significance. This study complicates Asian/Asian American tropes as “model minorities” or “perpetual foreigners” that blur students’ financial needs and hinder access to student loans. Concurrently, these tropes limit Black students’ access to student loans, reifying how loan systems function as “predatory inclusion,” (Seamster & Charron-Chénier, 2017, p.199).

Author

• Nancy Wong, University of Maryland