Internalizing Racial Discourses and White Dominance in Two Korean American Community Educational Spaces

• In Event: 16.061 - Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: 16.061-1 - "Othered" Identities in and out of Educational Contexts

Abstract

This paper draws from a larger critical ethnography that explored the both the significance of community-based education in Korean Americans’ lives as well as how these institutions may resist and/or reproduce racialized neoliberal ideologies. I share the preliminary themes that have emerged from data collected at two Korean community-based institutions. Specifically, I focus on how participants internalized racial discourses about Asian Americans and how this reinforced White dominance. Preliminary analyses suggest that participants at both institutions acquiesced to White dominance by reproducing discourses that position Whiteness as “normal” and racialized Asian Americans as model minorities and foreigners. At the same time, these spaces also nurtured community cultural wealth and helped parents and students strengthen their sense of co-ethnic community.

Author

• Eujin Park, University of Wisconsin - Madison