#Black Lives Matter and #Stop Asian Hate: A Comparative Analysis of Black and Asian International Students’ Perceptions

• In Event: Reevaluating higher education in the context of curriculum, activism, help-seeking, and partnerships

Proposal

INTRODUCTION:
International students often find themselves in a conundrum whenever they want to participate in political activism while studying in the United States (U.S.). This can be attributed to their multiple and intersecting social identities, particularly those that are marginalized (Burt et al., 2017). Our study examined Black and Asian international students’ perceptions of and involvement in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Stop Asian Hate movements during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Our findings show that most participants utilized indirect tactics/digital activism to engage in BLM and Stop Asian Hate protests/activism.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

We utilize Stewart and Williams (2019)’s theoretical framework that sees strength from student activism across a spectrum. Stewart and Williams (2019) present activism as having “nuance” and present in “everyday life.” From intentions ranging from “coping,” “undermining,” “sabotage,” “survival,” “disruption,” “anarchy,” and “revolution” more international students can be considered in the overall analysis as intending to resist. The actions (which Stewart and Williams refer to as methods) include, “showing up,” “breaking policy,” “community service/civic engagement,” “marches/boycotts/sit-ins,” “art,” and “violence.” The framework allows for multiple intersections and a wide range of aspects known in higher education to represent student activism. It also works well as the study explores micro and macro levels of activism engagement from international students.

METHODOLOGY:

We conducted an exploratory case study drawing data from two larger qualitative
research studies. The first study examined two Black international graduate students’ perceptions and involvement in BLM at a historically white institution during the pandemic. Data was collected via 60-minute semi-structured interviews on Zoom. The second study explored fifteen Asian international students, including undergraduate and graduate students, and their perceptions and experiences of race, racialization, racism, and neo-racism at a historically white institution. Data was collected via 60-90 minute semi-structured interviews in person. We compared/contrasted the case of Black international students’ involvement in the BLM and the case of Asian international students’ involvement in the Stop Asian Hate movement during the pandemic in our analysis.

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS/DISCUSSION:

In this section, we discuss the preliminary findings of two case studies. The final paper will include more detailed findings and discussion of these case studies.

This first case showed that Black international student participants used indirect tactics to engage in BLM related activities, including participating in Black student-led organization events on campus, signing petitions, attendance of BLM meetings at campus level-as organized by Black Student organizations, participation in non-violent social and fundraising events, and following BLM on social media platforms. One participant, Papa, observed that sometimes he is constrained by research work, by virtue of being a doctoral student thus making it difficult for him to participate in some events. He was also doing research on the agenda of BLM and he had seen positive things that the movement had advanced. Papa said,

I have been a scholar who has been researching so much on it. In fact, this semester I am writing a paper related to the Black Lives Matter movement but I am looking at the level of engagement of Black celebrities in the agenda of Black Lives Matter and I’m specifically focusing on Beyonce through her 2016 Album called lemonade. This was the moment when BLM had just started to kind of advocate against the oppression and violence on Black bodies. I have watched a lot of social media engagements …

Another participant, Mwadori, mentioned that she did not participate in the summer 2020 protest because of her visa status. She feared that if anything happened, she could be deported or even go to jail. Mwadori noted,

Not in a big way. You know there were people going into jail because of this so if anything would have happened to me, then that means my visa will be revoked because of participating in this but safely being at home and signing petitions online...educating myself about what was happening and how it affects me you know.

The second case illuminated that similar to the Black international student participants,
the majority of Asian international student participants engaged in indirect tactics of activism during their studies in the U.S. Many of them have heard and/or learned about the Stop Asian Hate movement via social media and engaged in activism by reposting and sharing information on their personal social media platforms or spreading the word among their friend circles. For example, Sanjay shared that he did not participate in any protests, but he supported the movement by talking to his friends about racial injustices and biases. He said,

Because like it’s injustice. If you don’t like…if everyone don’t act then no one will act and it’ll go forever. Someone has to act and if someone is like organizing a protest, then at least what you can do is just join it and like…give your voice to that protest.

A few participants expressed concerns over participating in protests. For example, Ali
shared that “riot is still a riot and it’s never gonna end in a good way.” He continued,

I still do care about it, but I don’t really…show any efforts in wanting to do like go to protests and stuff like that…because I felt like, even if I do that, it won’t really make a change in the system…unless you do something like internal, which is something that’s not really easy to achieve. But yeah, like and also, I don’t really like I don’t really like large crowds, so going there and then like people going stomping and stuff like that makes me really uncomfortable.

STUDY SIGNIFICANCE

The two case studies provided an opportunity for us to examine how international students, especially Black and Asian students, perceive and participate in social justice movements while studying in the U.S. This exploratory case study not only extends extant literature on student activism but also helps us to understand the many indirect ways that international students participate in political activism. These findings provide valuable insights for educators to better support international students in engaging in social justice activities on their respective campuses.

Authors

• Emmanuel S Wanjala, University of Maryland College Park

• Jia Zheng, University of Florida

• Annie Rappeport, University of Maryland College Park