Absent, Adjacent, or in Aggregate? The Racial Positioning of Asian Americans in Education Policy Research

• In Event: 50855 - Racial Hierarchies and Identity

Abstract

How does education policy research contribute to prevailing understandings of Asian Americans in the American racial hierarchy? To what extent are prevailing conceptions of Asian Americans reflected in education policy research? We investigate these questions through a systematic qualitative analysis of published articles in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (EEPA), the flagship educational policy journal in the United States. We reveal not only the state of Asian American inclusion in education research, but also the state of Asian American racial positioning (Kim 1999): Whether Asians are cast as members of an advantaged or disadvantaged group, whether they are considered people of color, or more proximate to Whites, for example. Our investigation is motivated by the notion that empirical research is an instantiation of a racial project, or the processes by which race, racial categories, and racial hierarchies become tangible and influential (Omi and Winant 2014; Baker et al. 2024). In particular, we are interested in persistent tropes of Asians as a model minority, as invisible (Lee 2022), and increasingly, seen as proximate to or even “honorary” Whites (Bonilla-Silva 2004; Zhou 2004). We situate our study within the context of educational policy research, a domain of scholarship within which there are arguably tangible and systemic consequences to the attention, inattention, and comparative ways that Asian Americans are posed as policy subjects relative to other racial groups.

Authors

• Sonia Giebel, Social Science Center Berlin

• David Song, University of Oklahoma

• Anthony Lising Antonio, Stanford University