This article examines the Asian diaspora experience from historical exclusion to the production of oppositional and alternative knowledges that count in education. The first section critically examines historical and contemporary discourses across disciplines on the construction of identity such as who is considered an Asian and Asian American,…

This chapter provides critical insights into transformative leadership, a leadership approach guided by equity, social justice, and emancipatory education, based on the practices of eight Asian American women in community college administration. The authors engaged in critical narrative inquiry and conducted semi-structured interviews with each…

As predominantly White institutions (PWIs), independent schools in the United States can alienate students who are either not White or do not possess the cultural capital necessary to navigate those spaces. Scholars have argued that alliance/affinity spaces help students of color acclimate to PWIs and help create a sense of belonging. My work with…

As anti-Black ideologies continue to prevail in Asian American communities, this autoethnography explores how two Southeast Asian American (SEAA) scholar-activists and community organizers contended with anti-Blackness, racism, and social justice research in their cross-racial and cross-ethnic solidarity community-organizing and educational…

Racism impacts various facets of the lives of people of color (POC) in the United States, spanning across historical and contemporary contexts. Chinese Americans, as an ethnic group historically excluded from entering the United States and denied naturalized citizenship, have endured distinctive and enduring forms of racism that are…

In this qualitative study, Samuel D. Museus analyzes how relative racialization processes and their dynamics shape Asian American college students' racial justice activism. The findings from his qualitative interviews with activist Asian American undergraduates reveal how these students perceived relative racialization processes as raising…

Steeped in the AsianCrit theoretical framework, the current study examined how anti-Asian hate impacted the mental health of Asian and diasporic Asian doctoral women in STEM. Six emergent themes were identified: 1) Witnessing and Experiencing Anti-Asian Hate; 2) Lack of Institutional and STEM Departmental Support; 3) Impact of Anti-Asian Hate on…

Structural oppression continues to be one of the most pressing problems in U.S. society, and college students have always played a major role in addressing systemic inequities. Yet, much remains to be learned about the experiences of students advocating social justice in higher education, and there is a paucity of research on Asian American…

Purpose: Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are not known for producing a high number of racial activists. On the contrary, scientific discourse often traffics in race-neutral language and ideologies, all the while producing racist science and technologies. This research explored the relationship between racial…

Through a critical discourse analysis of three Asian American organizations' rhetoric around race and education, we explore the activism of Asian Americans working against affirmative action and other race-based educational policies. We examine the way these groups engage ideological discourses regarding race, civil rights, and the freedom to…

A grounded theory study was employed to identify the conditions contributing to the core phenomenon of Asian American activists (N = 25) mobilizing toward thick solidarity with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in 2020. The findings indicate achieving a collective oppressed identity was necessary to mobilize in thick solidarity with the BLM…

After analyzing state standards and textbook excerpts, all the fourth graders in Ms. Yoo's classroom convened and discussed why the nonwhite suffragists were missing and what they could do about it. The students agreed that textbooks and standards "can't include everybody," but they also concurred that the stories of Indigenous, Black,…

This article reports on a critical qualitative study of a whiteness workshop series to understand the past experiences, contexts, and relationships that motivate White people and people of colour to participate in an in-depth anti-racism workshop, and what participants learn through engaging in this workshop series. First, most participants, White…

Context: Systemic oppression is one of the most pressing problems in U.S. society. However, relatively little is known about the process by which college students become committed to social justice agendas. In addition, systematic empirical inquiries that examine how Asian American students, in particular, develop such commitments are difficult to…

This study explores a Japanese-Korean-English trilingual Asian-American child's identity negotiation in a multicultural book club. Drawing upon the conception of "figured world" (Holland et al. 1998. "Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds." Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), it investigates how the book club as "a…