De-homogenizing ‘Asian Americans’ in Physics Education: DesiCrit as an Analytic Framework

• In Event: Mapping Racial Projects in Postsecondary STEM: Interrogating Scripts, Schemas, and Structures for Justice

Abstract

--Objectives
Asian Americans are often framed as overrepresented in STEM, homogenizing diverse experiences and obscuring intragroup disparities (Vue et al., 2023). This reinforces the Model Minority Myth, attributing success to innate ability and cultural values; masking the real, felt experiences of racism among Asian Americans (Chen and Buell, 2018). Recent scholarship critiques this, yet, often conceptualizes racialization as externally imposed, overlooking how Asian Americans negotiate racial positioning, leverage symbolic capital, shaping their experiences (McGee, 2018). To address these gaps, we examine historical and structural forces shaping South Asians’ racial positioning and the discursive strategies they use to navigate racial hierarchies in STEM classrooms.
--Theoretical framework
DesiCrit posits that South Asian Americans are racially ambiguous i.e., they occupy fluid, complex racial positionings shaped by intersecting factors including immigration history, religion, and language (Harpalani, 2013). We use DesiCrit to examine how these positionings are (re)shaped through racial claims (how individuals position themselves) and ascriptions (how others position them) within specific microclimes (regional, and institutional contexts), in broader historical contexts. Recognizing that racial ambiguity i.e. ‘not fitting’ into established racial categories in the Black/white binary can grant access to dominant spaces, and generate instability and constraint, we examine how South Asian American students use discursive strategies to assert belonging, align with whiteness, and at times reproduce anti-Blackness.
--Methods
We conduct a theoretical case study (Merriam, 1998; Yin, 2009), performing theory-informed interpretive analysis of student discourse. We use and extend DesiCrit to examine how racially ambiguous individuals’ racialization is impacted by historical context (macro-level), local disciplinary (meso-level) microclimes, and by how individuals make and contest racialized claims to power and belonging (micro-level), revealing shifting intergroup relationality and positioning in STEM classrooms.
--Data Sources
This work stems from a larger study on spatial justice in introductory physics classrooms at a community college a diverse student body. Students participated in stimulated recall interviews based on video recordings of their small-group work. This paper focuses on a group of four male students including a South Asian-American named Amar and a Hispanic-American named Trevor.
--Results
We argue that Amar’s sarcastic, aggressive humor counters British colonial and contemporary US stereotypes of South Asian men as feminized or lacking authority, acting as a claim to masculinity, whiteness, and epistemic authority (macro). The physics microclime (meso) rewards aggressive “masculine” performance and competitive argumentation, serving to affirm Amar and silence Trevor (Hispanic groupmate), who expresses hurt and hesitation to speak out in response to Amar’s humor. Finally, at the micro-level, Amar evades race, framing his humor as harmless and neutral, treating Trevor’s response as individual sensitivity rather than structurally imposed silencing.
--Significance
These group interactions reveal how racial positioning is negotiated in real time in classrooms. We offer nuanced insights into how South Asian American racial identities are performed, contested, and constructed within STEM microclimes, shaped by broader historical racial logics. This raises critical questions about intergroup relationality, serving as a call for South Asian racial consciousness and for the design of STEM microclimes that actively disrupt rather than reproduce racial hierarchies.

Authors

• Tra Huynh, Western Washington University

• Amy Robertson, Seattle Pacific University

• Shahnaz Masani, Michigan State University