The post-racial myth: Rethinking Chinese university students’ experiences and perceptions of racialised microaggressions in the UK

• In Event: The persistent oppression of racism in global higher education

Proposal

Western universities largely tend to portray themselves as increasingly meritocratic, ‘post-racial’ institutions where racialised inequalities do not exist (Tate & Bagguley, 2017). Moreover, the ascendence of neoliberal principles in higher education systems objectifies international students as ‘cash cows’, further undermining public awareness of and humanistic concern about the racialisation of and racism against this student group (Waters, 2020). As a result, the Asian international student body has long been ‘largely invisible’ and ‘habitually taken-for-granted’ in Western societies. (Waters, 2020, n.p.). Anti-Asian racism remains marginal if not non-existent in the formal institutional approaches of inclusion in UK universities. East Asian and particularly Chinese international students, who form the largest ethnic minority group in UK higher education are therefore left vulnerable (Moosavi, 2020) and silenced.
As the world recovers from the pandemic and anti-Asian hate crimes have been gradually disappearing from the headlines, this paper offers a timely reflection on Chinese international students’ experiences and perceptions of racialised microaggressions during the pandemic, and, more importantly, takes the discussion further by deconstructing and challenging the underlying post-racial discourse. It addresses the conference theme by drawing attention to the absence of protest against anti-Asian racism in the UK higher education context.
Based on 54 interviews with Chinese students from 13 universities across the UK, this paper examines four phrases used by Chinese international students in making sense of their racialised experiences. These include: the denial of racism (‘it’s not racism’), the justification of racism (‘it’s normal’), taking the blame of racism (‘it’s my fault’), and in some rare cases, their reflections on anti-Asian racism (‘we’re invisible’). These contribute to the widespread ‘post-racial’ discourses that view ‘race’ and racism as irrelevant, hence race-conscious practices and policies are no longer necessary in the higher education context, particularly in relation to Anti-Asian racism (Baber, 2015). However, our analyses contest such race-blind discourse. First, it shows that students’ denial of racism is a result of the absence of ‘anti-Asian racism’ discourse in the UK context, which itself reflects wider post-racial claims that leads to the 'absence of protest'. Second, students’ perception of racism as ‘normal’ results from their attribution of racism to the character of the racist perpetrator, which individualises/depoliticises an institutional and systemic problem. Third, our findings also suggest the reproduction of ‘internalised Orientalism’ (Moosavi, 2020) among Chinese international students that may lead to their ‘self-segregation’, which is in reality a result of their systemic exclusion from UK universities and wider society. Fourth, some students also identified the 'invisibility' of Asian international students in UK universities and expressed hope for inclusive actions from the university rather than mere formality. Therefore, we argue that Chinese international students’ racialized experiences of micro-aggressions and exclusion in UK higher education only reaffirm the relevance of combating anti-Asian racism in the post-pandemic era rather than negating it.
This paper contributes to the literature in the following ways. First, it problematises the dominant representation of international students as ‘monetarised objects’ in the Global North shaped by neoliberal market principles (Waters, 2021) where humanistic concern remains long absent. Rather, this article calls public and academic attention to their lived experiences as ‘racialised subjects’. Second, while considerable literature on anti-Asian racism and Sinophobia in Western universities has emerged in the past two years since the outbreak of the pandemic; most of these studies stem from the US and North American contexts (see Lee, 2020; Ma & Zhan, 2022). Thus, this paper offers insights into the often under-researched racialised experiences of Asian international students in the UK context Third, this article deconstructs the post-racial discourse and critically examines its intersection with neo-racism, neo-Orientalism and everyday racism, thus raising questions toabout the post-racial myth in the UK higher education context. On that basis, this paper makes recommendations to UK universities to better support international students and combat anti-Asian particularly anti-Chinese racism in the post-pandemic era.

Authors

• Jingran Yu, Institute of Education, Xiamen University

• Rohini Rai, Brunel University London

• Miguel Antonio Lim, The University of Manchester