"With All the Anti-Asian Crimes, We Feel Like It Was Necessary": Efforts to Resist White Supremacy in Schools

• In Event: Educational Advocacy: Motivations, Strategies, and Outcomes

Abstract

"This paper engages with political socialization and critical consciousness theories (Bañales, Aldana & Hope, 2021; Flanagan & Sherrod, 1998) to better understand and contextualize the acts of resistance to White supremacy carried out by Asian American youth throughout 2020-2021. Given the significance schools play in the political and racial socialization of adolescents, we focus on young people’s responses to their school’s silence and complicity around anti-Asian racism.

Drawing on interview and survey data collected in fall 2020 and spring of 2021 with 76 participants in Chicago, we examine the response of Asian American high school students to school-based race conversations. Participants were recruited via community-based organizations and their associated networks. The majority of our participants identify as monoethnically Chinese, cisgender women, and second-generation. Data was analyzed using an inductive-deductive thematic coding approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006); codes were created around initial research questions and also emerged from the data. The coding process emphasized iterative discussion among the team.

Our analysis of surveys and interviews revealed that school-based conversations importantly acknowledged and centered anti-Blackness, which often complemented conversations/learning in other spaces (social media, peers) for participants. School-based conversations and learning prompted critical self-reflection among most participants and encouraged many to confront anti-Black attitudes within their families and address the manifestations of White supremacy within their schools.

Although schools acknowledged and responded to largely publicized incidents of anti-Black racial violence, participants commonly reported that the experiences of Asian Americans were often minimized, overlooked, and misrepresented even amidst a rise in anti-Asian sentiment throughout the pandemic. Many youth in the study were consequently drawn to other spaces to aid them in the development of their critical racial consciousness. Specifically, social media and Asian American and activism-based youth organizations and groups facilitated learning about the historical and contemporary context of anti-Asian racism. By doing so, these spaces encouraged young people to critique the responses of their schools and mobilized some to grow their political consciousness and exercise their political agency. Indeed, a handful of participants approached their administrators to change the school curriculum and to call out ways in which their schools perpetuate White supremacy whether intentionally or not. Mobilized by the urgency of the moment, some youth also co-facilitated spaces with peers to encourage collective learning and action.

Asian American youth’s critiques and actions toward school responses to anti-Asian racism challenge pervasive flat narratives about Asian Americans as submissive, politically apathetic “model minorities” who aspire to be “honorary Whites” (Wu, 2013; Tuan, 1998). Our findings align with others that highlight the importance of politicizing mechanisms--particularly, involvement in affinity and organizing spaces--in fostering youth critical consciousness and activism (Lin, 2020; Osajima, 2007; Suyemoto et al., 2015). When their schools failed to address their desires and needs, many youth sought out alternative spaces--engaging in resistance efforts to educate themselves and others about anti-Asian racism and advocate for their needs and those of other students of color.
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Authors

• Helen Lee, University of Chicago

• Soo-Young Lee, Seoul National University of Education