The voice of the Other in a ‘liberal’ ivory tower: exploring the counterstory of an Asian international student on structural racism in US academia

ABSTRACT

The normative institutional practices of White, native English speakers have been explored in detail by CRT scholars in US academia, and these practices perpetuate a system which maintains White privilege to the detriment and systemic exclusion of the Other. Consequently, students of colour and non-native English speakers are inclined to face a number of forms of inequality, inequity, discrimination and harassment based on Whiteness and nativism including English speaker centrism, and this eventually serves to reproduce Whiteness and White racial domination. To better understand this institutional practices based on Whiteness in US academia, this paper explores how structural inequity based on linguistic racism and White privilege is reproduced by patterns in everyday institutional practice in US academia, and how intersectional structural inequity influences non-White, non-native speakers of American English such as international students from Asia by interviewing an Asian international ELL Ph.D. student, and exploring his counterstory in detail.

KEYWORDS:

• Whiteness
• CRT
• AsiaCrit
• higher education
• linguistic racism

Introduction

After Barack Obama became the 44th US president, society’s inclination towards colour blindness accelerated, and people have started talking about ‘post-racial America’. There is a popular belief that we live in a ‘post-racial’ society, in which people of colour are treated as equals in terms of their White counterparts, so that race is no longer relevant in terms of people of colour moving up the social ladder, even as far as the White House (Wise 2010). Despite this, racialisation of students of colour, which reproduces and perpetuate structural racial inequity is still quite prevalent in US educational institutions (Pollock 2004; DiAngelo 2006; Ladson-Billings and Tate, W. F. 2006; Paul 2014).

Racialisation refers to the societal or institutional practices of categorising actors according to race (Pollock 2004). A number of Critical Race Theorists (CRT Scholars) have discussed the racialisation of students of colour in education systems. Pollock (2004) highlights how students’ academic achievements are frequently discussed in K-12 schools in relation to a student’s racial background, based on an assumption that White students are academically more capable than other racial groups. Similarly, Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) confirm that negative assumptions tend to be made about the academic ability and behaviour of African-American children. Accordingly, within current education systems, they are more likely to be treated more harshly than their White counterparts for exactly the same behavioural problems.

In observing the process through which Whiteness is reproduced in educational settings where half of the learners are non-White, non-native English speakers, DiAngelo (2006) suggests that differences in native language could add another layer of power dynamics to racial domination. Intersectional oppression based on Whiteness and native language form part of the process of reproducing White and native English speaker privilege (DiAngelo 2006). Similarly, Morita-Mullaney (2018) describes how ELLs (English Language Learners) experience intersectional oppression based on White privilege and linguistic racism. She clarifies the systemic exclusion against her Latina colleague working in the field of education that ‘[a]s a non-native speaker of English, her accent and race constructed her as a foreigner and despite her dual mastery of English and Spanish, her inclusion in leadership decisions was limited’ (Morita-Mullaney 2018, 384). These research findings indicate that differences in identity in relation to a person’s racial and language backgrounds have the potential to generate intersectional structural oppression against non-White populations in US higher education institutions.

It is also interesting to note that the ratio of non-White, non-native English speakers (i.e. non-White international students) in US higher education institutions has been increasing steadily since 2010 (Hussar and Bailey 2016; IIE Institution of International Education 2019). This means that a greater number of international students studying in these institutions could experience a number of forms of intersectional oppression based on Whiteness and linguistic racism. There has been, nevertheless, little research on international student experiences in US academia in relation to the structural inequity they might experience. This paper therefore aims to explore how structural inequity based on Whiteness and native language might be reproduced and perpetuated in a US higher education institution through everyday institutional practices for reproducing White privilege. It specifically explores the counterstory of a former Japanese Ph.D. student who studied and conducted research at a large ‘liberal’ research university in USA, and who experienced structural inequity at this academic institution.

Literature review: Why CRT? the components of standards of ‘normal’ experience based on whiteness, and potential approaches to deconstructing these normative standards

Structural racism in US education institutions

Systemic and structural racism are forms of racism that are pervasively and deeply embedded in and throughout systems, laws, written or unwritten policies, entrenched practices, and established beliefs and attitudes that produce, condone, and perpetuate widespread unfair treatment of people of colour (Braveman et al. 2022, 171-172).

Following Brown vs. the Board of Education, racial desegregation of K-12 schools was legally mandated. The subsequent Civil Rights Movement eventually led to affirmative action towards desegregating university entrance and achieving racial equity in higher education institutions (Chism 2004; Clotfelter 2004). As a result, overt forms of racism are not often seen nowadays, though many scholars suggest that a number of forms of structural inequity against people of colour are still quite prevalent, and that they are perpetuated through societal or institutional practices in invisible, subtle ways (Deitch et al. 2003; Marx 2006). For instance, Pollock (2004) describes how teachers sometimes become colour blind, and relate race to the academic achievements of students of colour behind closed doors in K-12 schools. Similarly, Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) clarify how academic tracking in K-12 schools is race-based, and students of colour are more likely to be tracked into the vocational track. In addition, Liao, Hong, and Rounds (2016) identify that racism continues to perpetuate White racial domination, even if it has changed from being blatantly visible to being more subtle and invisible. This means even at the ‘post-racial’ period, the structural racial inequity against students of colour is still being perpetuated and influences their academic paths.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a framework to explore structural racial inequity

Some CRT scholars suggest that CRT and the concept of Whiteness are helpful in understanding and deconstructing these forms of structural inequity against people of colour by challenging the main components of structural inequity (Ladson-Billings and Tate, W. F. 2006; Tate 1997). Critical Race Theory emerged to challenge the White normative perspective, derived from a colonial past, which normalises White racial domination within current legal, social and institutional structures. CRT is characterised by the following five components: the centrality of race and racism, challenging dominant ideology, a commitment to social justice, centrality of experiential knowledge and a transdisciplinary perspective (Solorzano and Yosso 2002a). Solorzano and Yosso (2002a) further clarify on these five tenets that:

Informed by a unique combination of at least five tenets, a CRT framework in education is critical and different from other educational frameworks because it: (1) critiques separate discourse on race, gender, and class and therefore focuses on the intercentricity of racism with other forms of subordination; (2) challenges dominant ideology that supports the deficit theorising prevalent in educational and social science discourse; (3) focuses on the experiences of students and communities of colour to learn from their racialised experiences with oppression; (4) works towards social justice in education as part of a larger goal to promote a liberatory or transformative solution to racial, gender, and class subordination; and (5) utilises the interdisciplinary knowledge base of ethnic studies, women’s studies, sociology, history, and the law to better understand the experiences of students of colour (156).

In addition to these five tenets, CRT also ‘questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law’ (Delgado and Stefancic 2012, 3). It sees these as factors which perpetuate structural racial inequity in the sense that the liberal order is construed within a framework of Whiteness, White centrality or White racial domination (Delgado and Stefancic 2012). In other words, CRT hypothesises that these five tenets and the liberal order, within the framework of Whiteness or White superiority, are closely related to the perpetuation or deconstruction of structural racial inequity based on White privilege.

Whiteness, deficit views and structural inequity

In order to explore the first tenet involving the centrality of racism, the concept of Whiteness needs to be addressed. Whiteness tends to be defined as racial identity connected to structural privilege based on race, or the privileged status of White people. This might be ‘a location of structural advantage of race privilege … a “standpoint”, a place from which White people look at ourselves, at others, and at society … [and] a set of cultural practices that are usually unmarked and unnamed’ (Frankenberg 1993, 1). DiAngelo (2006) also clarifies that ‘Whiteness is … intrinsically linked to dynamic relations of domination’ and ‘because it operates relationally, the interpretation and consequences of Whiteness vary depending on who is interacting and in what context’ (1984). In other words, Whiteness indicates the normalised privileged status of those racially and culturally identified as White within societal or institutional power dynamics, and the ways in which Whiteness manifests and forms racial inequity can be very different depending on who is present in which context.

This privileged status attached to Whiteness, and the cultural practices associated with it, are normalised in everyday social or institutional practices or discourses. Accordingly, ‘describing Whiteness has sometimes been expressed as “illuminating the invisible”, because it envelops so much of what White people and many people of colour consider normal, rather than a marker of White culture, interests, language, etc’. (Marx 2006, 45). As a result, the cultural characteristics of White people are more likely to be perceived as ‘race neutral’ and ‘normal’, while the cultural characteristics of racialised or non-White Americans, a.k.a ‘Others’, are recognised as ‘different’, ‘deviating from the norm’, and ‘ethnic’.

This normalised Whiteness leads to ‘deficit thinking’ against racial or cultural ‘Others’ who are different from Whites. Deficit thinking involves ‘positing that the student who fails in school does so because of internal deficits or deficiencies. Such deficits manifest, it is alleged, in limited intellectual abilities, linguistic shortcomings, lack of motivation to learn and immoral behaviour’ (Valencia 1997, 2). They also fail ‘to look for external attributions of school failure. How schools are organised to prevent learning, inequalities in the political economy of education, and oppressive macropolicies and practices in education are all held exculpatory in understanding school failure’ (Valencia 1997, 2). The deficit view also appears convincing because it is a ‘pseudoscience to support an alleged scientific paradigm of White superiority, apropos to people of colour’ (Valencia 2010, 13). In other words, deficit thinking is taken to be a scientific explanation for White superiority and a product of the White normative interpretation of school failure or cultural differences in students of colour. This clearly risks generating the conclusion that non-White populations tend to have ‘cognitive deficits’, which limit their intellectual capabilities because they have ‘different’ cultures which are inferior to White culture.

Counterstorytelling as a research method to explore racial inequity

To deconstruct deficit views, it is necessary to understand that the system itself is to blame, not the victims of the system who suffer from the reproduced inequity. Accordingly, CRT emphasises the importance of ‘counterstorytelling’, which largely involves learning about the experiences of people of colour within societal or institutional structures based on Whiteness. Counterstorytelling is defined as ‘a method of telling the stories of those people whose experiences are not often told (i.e. those on the margins of society). The counter-story is also a tool for exposing, analysing, and challenging the majoritarian stories of racial privilege’, which mainly has three types, personal narratives, other people’s stories, and composite narratives, all of them are aimed at challenging dominant discourses on race (Solorzano and Yosso 2002b, 32). In other words, counterstorytelling is a method to explore how those who are sacrificed, and therefore made silent, under the current social or institutional structure, experience the systemic oppressions based on Whiteness.

Hiraldo (2010) further explores how counterstories can help promote understanding of structural inequity at higher education institutions by learning about different experiences of people of colour:

The use of counterstories in analyzing higher education’s climate provides faculty, staff, and students of color a voice to tell their narratives involving marginalized experiences. Counterstories can assist in analyzing the climate of a college campus and provide opportunities for further research in the ways which an institution can become inclusive and not simply superficially diverse … An institution can aim to increase the diversity of the campus by increasing the number of students of color. However, if the institution does not make the necessary changes to make the campus climate inclusive, the institution will have a difficult time maintaining diversity.

(Hiraldo 2010, 54)

Hiraldo (2010) suggests that the voices of people who are marginalised in the current system of structural inequity based on Whiteness could provide insights into how this system, which gives White people an advantage over the Other, works against people of colour, and therefore perpetuates racial inequity. Hiraldo (2010) also illustrates how a ‘superficially diverse’ campus climate, which simply involves a greater number of people of colour on campus, is not sufficient to develop an inclusive campus environment if the necessary changes are not made to the system to make it inclusive for all. In terms of promoting racial equity, CRT also suggests that interest convergence could play a role in hindering the introduction of an inclusive campus environment for all. Bell (1980) defines interest convergence as the situation in which ‘[t]he interest of [people of colour] in achieving racial equality will be accommodated only when it converges with the interests of white’ (523). Similarly, Gillborn (2012) defines the term that ‘advances in race equality only come about when White[s] … see the changes as in their own interests’ (Gillborn 2012, 3). In other words, within current social or institutional structures and practices or power structures, all issues of race, other forms of oppression, intersectional oppression or ‘multiculturalism’ are addressed and resolved only within the framework of Whiteness, which results in benefiting White people, serving White interest, and therefore, perpetuating White privileges. Otherwise, the status quo of current structural inequity is perpetuated through unchanged societal or institutional practices which continue to reproduce White privilege.

This literature review revealed that White privilege tends to be perpetuated through institutional practices based on Whiteness. Structural inequity is reproduced through these institutional practices, and can only be deconstructed by exploring the voices of people who are marginalised within these practices. This paper therefore considers how Whiteness might work against Asian, non-native English speakers, and reproduce White privilege through White normative societal or institutional practices and discourses. Although the ‘model minority’ stereotype that Asian succeed by merit in the US society is prevalent (Yu 2006), within the White normative institutional practices mentioned above, Asians are more likely to be treated as people of colour, a deficient ‘Other’.

The paper explores the counterstory of Asian international students who experienced the intersectional structural oppressions based on racism and linguistic racism. The author chose Akio, a former Japanese Ph.D. student who studied and conducted research in US academia, as an interviewee who shares his counterstory for the research, given that he experienced a number of forms of rejection and exclusion based on Whiteness, institutional racism, and native English speaker centrism throughout his academic career in US academia.

To obtain his counterstory, the author met Akio in person and had a two-hour interview with him twice in which the author asked him to share his personal experiences of overt and covert forms of racism and other forms of discrimination in US academia. The author audiotaped and transcribed the interviews, and coded his counterstory. In his counterstory, the author identified some issues, which have strong connections to Whiteness and native English speaker centrism; therefore, the author summarised some parts of his counterstory and inserted some of his verbatim quotes below to highlight these issues.

Counterstory by Akio Yamaguchi, a former Japanese Ph.D. student at a large research university in USA, well known for its liberalness

(Note: All the individuals in his counternarratives including Akio himself are faculty or Ph.D. students in the same graduate school and have been assigned pseudonyms, which bear no resemblance to their real names.)

‘You know … I don’t mean to be sarcastic, but you need to look like a White male to earn even minimal respect here (US graduate school) as a human being’, Akio commented and sighed during his interview. One day, he was on his way to a research meeting with his colleagues and a professor named Moira. He was very depressed because of the harassment and discrimination he was experiencing, as he was the only non-White, non-native English speaker among the research group members. Moira was a White American professor caring about social justice. Her passion for social justice led her to coordinate a research group exploring the efficiency of a newly embedded education programme promoting social justice. This new programme required a new type of field placements, where all participants had to spend time with students of colour at community centres located in communities impacted by poverty. The participants, mostly from White, middle-class households, could learn about different social and cultural practices in the communities of colour, and different social realities from their own.

Although Moira was passionate about social justice and loved discussing social justice issues, the way she related to Akio was not particularly socially appropriate. Akio recalled that Moira always looked annoyed and irritated whenever she talked to him, regardless of the fact that he could not remember any incidents where he might have said or done anything to offend Moira. This paper further explores his counterstory in detail to examine how Whiteness and institutional and linguistic racism influence the academic life of Asian non-native English speaking student like Akio in US academia.

Issue 1: Moira’s deficit view: Christy as someone who always academically surpasses Akio

Akio also shared a counterstory on the incident he had had with Moira, which highlights how the Moira’s way of understanding Christy and Akio, and their intellectual capability is deeply influenced by White superiority and the deficit view. According to Akio,

I was considering switching my academic adviser, as John (Note: Akio’s first academic adviser, a well-known scholar of colour in the Akio’s research field) had waited four months before reading my dissertation proposal, until he had finished preparing his presentations for a big conference, and he didn’t take my academic progress seriously at all. So I consulted Moira about switching my academic adviser, and she asked me how many more years I was planning to spend in the PhD programme. So I said I wanted to graduate in the next three years. Moira laughed at me and said, “It even took Christy seven years”, and “How dare you!”. So I responded quietly: “I’m a PhD student who transferred from an Ivy League institution, and already spent 2.5 years in a doctoral programme there”. She sighed and said with a smirk, “Right, you could surprise me”. At that point, Moira had no idea of my academic ability as she hadn’t even had a chance to read my academic papers, and had never taught me in class. However, it was obvious that she firmly believed that Christy, a White American graduate student, surpassed me academically at any circumstances, and as if these assumptions she made were facts.

This Moira’s way of relating to Akio indicates how White superiority and racialisation based on the deficit view against Asian students oppress international students like Akio. First, Moira’s strong assumption about Christy’s overachievement indicates how Christy’s Whiteness influences Moira’s perception. Whiteness is defined as racial and cultural identity as White, which gives people structural privileges because ‘[b]eing perceived as white carries more than a mere racial classification; it is a social and institutional status and identity imbued with legal, political, economic, and social rights and privileges that are denied to others’ (DiAngelo 2018, 24). In this case, Moira’s assumption about Christy’s overachievement is based on Christy’s Whiteness, which automatically provides her privileged status in the institutional structure based on the racial and cultural hierarchy over Akio in US academia. Consequently, some faculty members like Moira behaved in accordance with the assumption as if these White students are always smarter and more intellectually capable than non-White students like Akio and resulting in perpetuating already widespread unequitable institutional practices based on White privilege.

Also, Moira’s perception of Akio overwraps with what Moosavi (2020) identifies as ‘Orientalist deficit view’ specifically against Asian students in Western academia that ‘there is a common tendency within Western higher education for East Asian students to be imagined as intellectually deficient, especially in comparison to Western students (who are typically racialised as white)’ (286). Akio’s experience in this respect highlights how Moira’s deficit view in terms of Asian international students interfered with her understanding of Akio and Christy. In her head, it was almost a scientific fact that Akio was underachieving compared to Christy, regardless of the reality because of their different racial backgrounds.

Issue 2: Exact same interview protocol looks very different depending on who made it

Moira’s deficit view against Akio leads him to experiencing various forms of discriminations and negatively influenced his academic life. In addition, Moira’s harassment of, and discrimination against Akio, worsened. Akio shared his another counterstory when he made an interview protocol for the research group based on Moira’s unclear explanation on how it should look like and what kind of questions need to be included. And at the end, Moira ended up yelling at Akio, which never happened to any other White students.

One day we had a research meeting, and I was in charge of making interview protocols based on the theory we used. Since Moira didn’t give us clear enough explanations on what kinds of information she expected from the interview data, I asked her some clarifying questions a couple of times but didn’t really get what she meant. After she left the meeting room, I asked some of my White colleagues and found that her explanations were not quite clear to them either, even to her fellow White Americans. So, I did my best and brought the interview protocols to the meeting. Moira started yelling at me at the meeting that the protocol was out of the question. And there was no way of discussing it without taking into consideration or recalling the fact that she had done a terrible job in clarifying what she meant. I stared at her, and she started explaining what she had expected. So, after the meeting I worked on revising the protocol. Then Christy, a White American fellow graduate student, offered to help me revise the interview protocol, but she didn’t tell Moira that she was helping me. When I brought the protocol to the next meeting, Moira thought I had done the protocol completely by myself, and commented, “It’s a little better, and some questions have started to make sense, but it’s not quite there yet”, without specifying what the problem really was.

Up until this point, it is obvious that Moira had provided no clear explanation to the entire research group regarding how the interview protocol should have looked like. Also, when Moira thought that the protocol was made solely by Akio, she indicated her dissatisfaction with the revised version of the protocol. Note that Moira even has not referred to any possibility that her explanation might have not been clear enough and assumed that it was totally Akio to blame. Her this inclination overwraps with the Orientalist deficit view as well as the racialisation practices among White teachers, monolithically categorising students of colour as ‘deficient’ and intellectually less capable than their White counterparts regardless of their actual individual academic capabilities as Pollock (2004) discusses.

Akio continued, and confessed a surprising counterstory on the incident that happened to this exact same revised version of the interview protocol he revised with Christy, when Moira knew that Christy revised the protocol.

Moira asked Christy to review the protocol to complete it, but Christy had nothing to change or add as she had already added the questions she thought were important when she helped me discreetly. In reviewing the final version of the protocol at the next meeting, which had not changed at all from the protocol Moira had seen at the last meeting, Moira commented, ‘It’s much better and looks great!’

This series of Moira’s behaviour corresponds with what Marx (2006) claims ‘[b]ecause Whiteness and racism are so thickly woven together, just talking about Whiteness and race with Whites can readily illuminate beliefs in the inferiority of people of colour and the superiority of Whites’ (53). Through this counterstory, it is possible to see that what really mattered to Moira was not whether the interview protocol included the targeted questions to get the types of data needed. The only thing that mattered to Moira was whether she knew that a White American student, who she obviously thinks more academically capable, had made the protocol or not. The fact that she asked Christy to help Akio to revise the protocol is also very indicative of this her perception of Akio and Christy based on White superiority.

Moira’s divergent reactions to the exact same protocol also indicate how ‘[t]he privileges attached to Whiteness have been, and continue to be, perpetuated in subtle ways through American institutions (Marx 2006, 53)’. The way in which Moira behaved signals that a White American student like Christy is much more intellectually capable and trustworthy, and therefore deserves more respect, compared with an Asian non-native English speaking student like Akio, who is supposed to be in the position of a second class citizen, being much less intellectually capable, consequently, does not even deserve a minimal respect, and okay to yell at, which she never does to any White American students.

In other words, it is possible to claim that this series of Akio’s experiences clarifies how White privilege, and at the same time, oppressions against a non-White non-native English speaker like Akio, are reproduced through everyday subtle institutional practices within a research group in higher education institutions in the US. Through the oppressions based on racial hierarchy described in the counterstory, a non-White non-native English speaker like Akio is allocated with a certain slot in the society, placing much more extra burdens based on racialisation upon his shoulders, which his White counterparts never even have to think or worry about.

Issue 3: Christy’s deficit view: Akio as someone who always needs Christy’s help

Deficit view manifests in variety of forms. Moira’s issue, especially her comment on Akio’s intellectual capability when he was considering switching his academic advisor is a more overt form of deficit view; however, sometimes deficit view manifests in a divergent form, even as a kind helpful support. Akio also recalled that Christy tended to keep offering him unnecessary help, based on her assumption that Akio needed her help all the time.

Re-reading all the emails from Christy, the word ‘help’ pops up all the time, like: ‘Feel free to let me know when you need any help’ in almost every single email from her. At the beginning, I thought she wanted to work as a team, but every time I offered her a help, her answer was ‘No’. It was almost like she always had to be the smarter capable one that gave us help, and I was supposed to be the one that needed her help all the time.

Furthermore, being ‘kind’ to him and offering him unnecessary help meant that Christy did not do her own parts thoroughly, and Akio ultimately had to sort out the mess Christy had made, and she even did not notice she made it. Akio noted:

I was in charge of dealing with all the paperwork with the division of the university, which monitored all the ongoing research on campus to make sure there was no violation of research regulations, and Christy was in charge of all the paperwork with this division before me. And for our data collection, the division officials required us to use the version of the consent forms with their stamps on, and they explained the regulations to Christy, but she didn’t make sure we used the right version of the consent forms. And the fact that we used the wrong version of the consent forms ended up coming to their attention, and we had to recall all the consent forms from all the research participants. Even when that happened, Christy sent me an email saying, ‘Don’t feel bad about it. Everyone makes mistakes. No worries!’. You know, this is all about the mess she made. It is way too obvious that, although Christy was in charge of the paperwork before me, she never even questioned if she might’ve been the one that made the mistakes. She was so sure that I was the one.

This incident clearly indicates that Christy had a strong deficit view of Akio, as if he were always the one who needed her help and was the one to blame for all mistakes. And, her perception of Akio is clearly in align with the description of the Western academia’s inclination to discriminate against Asian international students to perceive them ‘through generalisations about them as naturally deficient’ because Christy never even considered that she could have been the one who made serious errors (Moosavi 2020, 3).

In other words, Christy’s strong deficit view against Akio blindfolded her in some way, which made it difficult for her to see that she is the one that made the mess and Akio is the one that sorted it out, not the one who made it. Akio also confessed that when he told Christy that she was the one who made the mess, ‘Christy was almost like crying and said that I should’ve made it clear in front of everyone and I didn’t have to protect her’. This her comment could be indicating her sense of professional responsibility, however, also clearly indicates that Christy perceives of Akio as not the one to protect her, because a White student like her is supposed to be more capable than a non-White student like Akio, who is supposed to be much less capable and always needs her help. The series of her way of relating to Akio, consequently, indicates her deep-rooted Orientalist deficit view.

Issue 4: Exclusion based on linguistic racism

Akio also highlighted an incident where Moira and Christy excluded him from the article-writing process for publications, based on Christy’s negative assumptions about his writing abilities based on the fact that his native language is not English, although Akio made it clear many times at the research meetings that he was interested in being involved in writing. Akio confessed his another counterstory that

Once we’d finished collecting and analysing certain volumes of datasets, we decided to work on publishing our work. So, Moira started discussing publishing our work and asked for volunteers to do the writing. So I raised my hand and said, “I’m interested”. After a couple of seconds, Moira started looking down and said, “Sure”. After the meeting, I was about to knock on Moira’s office door to ask her some questions about data collection, and overheard Moira and Christy talking. I overhead Christy saying, ‘ … but he’s a non-native speaker. Isn’t it too risky to get him involved?’ Neither Christy nor Moira had had an opportunity to read my academic papers, and these assumptions they were making were something completely made up in their heads and not the facts. And of course, I didn’t hear anything from them about the article-writing, and they carried out all the writing processes discreetly through email correspondence, pretending that nothing was going on. As a result, Christy and Alexia (Note: another fellow White American student working for the research group) got involved in writing and I didn’t.

Akio’s experience here highlights how linguistic racism, defined as a branch of cultural racism ‘not based on “races” but on culturalistic essentialized groups of people’, affects all Asian international students and perpetuates inequitable institutional practices against Asian international students (Rodat 2017, 134). Making a decision not to include him in writing process even without knowing how his actual writing was a clear form of racialisation based on linguistic racism as if all the non-native English speakers were poor at writing.

DiAngelo (2006) further clarifies how linguistic racism and Whiteness intersectionally form institutional oppressions against Asian international students.

When students of color are also second-language learners, another layer is added to the hierarchical differential in power. Power relations play a crucial role in social interactions between language learners and target language speakers. Language learners have a complex social identity that must be understood with reference to larger, and frequently inequitable, social structures that are reproduced in day-to-day social interaction.

(DiAngelo 2006, 1985)

In this Akio’s counterstory on the exclusion from the article writing process, his racial backgrounds as Asian already interferes with Akio’s relationships with Moira and Christy in a certain way, and the fact that he is the English Language Learners also interferes with the inequities against him and provided him with a certain spot in the racial and linguistic hierarchy. Consequently, he was treated in a way that privileged those who hold Whiteness and native English speakers, which means non-White non-native English speakers like Akio had to sacrifice their own dignity in return. Note also that this everyday social practice by Moira and Christy obviously reproduce, perpetuate and solidify their White institutional privilege on the sacrifice of non-White non-native speaking students.

Issue 5: Interest convergence: Social justice aimed for exclusively white Americans

This series of Akio’s counterstory clearly highlights how White privileged status is being reproduced within institutional power structure at US graduate school through everyday subtle discriminatory institutional practices. Because of the normalised Whiteness or interest convergence observed between Moira and Christy, even when they are serious about social justice, their senses of justice are still construed within their White privilege. As a result, the social injustice against non-White will remain unquestioned. Akio also went on to note that,

Every time Moira talked about justice, it was all about interpersonal or legal justice, such as a state constitutional amendment plan to introduce legally binding domestic partnerships, for White American lesbians like her (Note: Moira is openly lesbian). It was obvious that she didn’t care about racial injustice when she talked about justice. It almost looked like the only justice Moira cared about was social justice exclusively for White American lesbians, as she even made derogatory comments about transgender and transvestite populations too.

This Moira’s perception of justice clearly overwraps with the concept of interest convergence. Social justice for lesbian populations, regardless of their racial backgrounds, might be okay for her as it is beneficial for her or her own group of people, White lesbian. Racial justice, on the other hand, has a risk of harming White lesbians’ racially privileged status as White. Consequently, Akio barely heard the word ‘racial justice’ from Moira, and her series of behaviour described in the counterstory was based on racial inequity based on normalised Whiteness and interest convergence. In other words, achieving racial justice never happens unless those with White privilege would be willing to step out of their structurally privileged statuses and see the concept of justice without their normalised Whiteness. Otherwise, the types of justice such as racial justice that harm White privilege will remain unquestioned, and accordingly, unsolved.

Discussion and analysis of the above counterstory within a framework of CRT

Considering Akio’s counterstory from a CRT point of view, some salient issues emerge. For instance, it is clear that Moira and Christy have a strong deficit view of Akio, particularly his intellectual and professional abilities and his command of English. These are based on incorrect assumptions. On the other hand, they overestimate Christy’s abilities. As a result, Akio was mocked, excluded, mistreated, looked down upon and constantly offered unnecessary help unlike his White American counterparts.

Given Moira and Christy’s insistence that they cared about social justice, Akio’s experience is also a clear example of how interest convergence works against deconstructing structural inequity. In short, Moira and Christy did not even question whether their standards of justice involved deficit views of non-White, non-native English speakers, and their concern about justice was such that it met their interests and did not affect their White privilege. Therefore, as White people, they saw no issues of social injustice in their discrimination against, or mistreatment of Asian international students, because the marginalisation of these students took place within a system of structural inequity which preserved White privileged status. Accordingly, Moira cared about discrimination against LGBT populations, as discrimination against White lesbians harmed White females such as herself. In contrast, she did not care about other forms of inequity such as racism against Asian international students, as these caused her no personal harm. On the contrary, they helped preserve her privileged status as a White woman.

Akio’s counterstory demonstrates that, even at a large research university which is well known both regionally and nationally for its liberal standards, these standards could be based on Whiteness. This could result in reproducing White privileges for Moira and Christy, and could be perpetuating the status quo of structural inequity against non-White international students, such as Akio experienced. To deconstruct these forms of structural inequity and promote equitable educational environments, it will be important to seek more practical ways of making Whiteness more visible to White people themselves. Some scholars have already noted the importance of educating White people about their Whiteness (Sullivan 2006), suggesting that their lack of awareness is not coincidental, but rather a learned habit, aimed at perpetuating the racial dominance of Whites to the detriment of the Other. According to Sullivan (2006),

White privileged ignorance, as I will call the ignorance that benefits and supports the domination of white people, does not contribute to the racial privilege of white people. But what is misleading about the above accounts is their portrayal of white privileged ignorance as completely accidental and unintentional. This naïve view of ignorance posits it as a simple lack of knowledge, a gap that has not yet been filled but that easily could be … What is striking about these naïve views is that they have the effect of excusing people for their racism – and white people in particular since they … are the beneficiaries of white privilege

(18).

Sullivan (2006) highlights how White people appropriate Whiteness as a habit, rather than being ‘accidentally’ ignorant about White racial domination, and this habit includes intentionally ignoring their racially privileged status to the detriment of the Other. MacMullan (2009) suggests that ‘since whiteness persists in the form of habitual action, we need to preserve the terminology and discourse of race in order to conduct the necessary inquiry into how to solve the problem of inherited white supremacist habits’ (72). In other words, to deconstruct the privileged status of White people, it is necessary to explore the terminology and discourse of race critically. For example, it is important to consider how racial difference becomes pseudoscience, as well as how it is discussed in everyday terms, and how these terms are used to normalise racial inequality and the racially privileged status of White people. In this way, projects such as Pollock’s (2004) research, exploring how race was spoken about in school buildings in a K-12 school in California, have huge potential in terms of raising awareness among White people themselves about the fact that Whiteness is a learned habit. They can clarify how common communication patterns involving race and race labels are used without sounding racist.

It is important to note that learning for deconstructing Whiteness needs to be associated with changes in behaviour, or discourse which leads to the deconstruction of the societal or institutional structures or practices which perpetuate inequities. Accordingly, a further avenue for investigation in terms of promoting racially and linguistically equitable campus environments at higher education institutions needs to promote racial justice for all students on campus, including Asian international students.

Conclusion: Are the education institutions really merit-based for students of all races?

Although higher education institutions in US are considered merit-based (Kubota 2002), a graduate school Akio attended much more leans towards perpetuating structural racial inequity based on Whiteness regardless of its reputation as a ‘liberal education institution’. At least between Moira and Christy, they shared ‘entrenched practices’ and ‘established beliefs and attitudes’ (Braveman et al. 2022, 172) of underestimating the intellectual capability of non-White non-native English speaking students, which clearly perpetuates widespread structural racial inequity through everyday social and institutional practices.

The ways they related to Akio are not only indicative of how individual racist behaviours look like, but also how everyday social and institutional practices reproduce the institutional structural inequity based on racial and linguistic hierarchy. Through Akio’s counterstory on the interview protocol issue, it became clear that even when the final product is exactly the same, a White faculty member praises it when she knows it was made by a White student, while indicating dissatisfactions when the White faculty thinks it was made by a non-White non-native English speaking student. This clearly indicates that even when equally academically capable, White student intellectual capabilities are overestimated, while those of non-White or non-native English speaking students are heavily underestimated based on Whiteness. Consequently, these non-White or non-native English speaking students result in struggling much more to deserve the exact same merit as their White counterparts even when they are equally academically capable. Note that through these subtle everyday social and institutional practices, the widespread institutional racial inequity in higher education institutions is reproduced, perpetuated and solidified, and keeps influencing the academic paths of non-White or non-native English speaking students in US academia even now.

Consequently, to intervene this cycle of perpetuating the institutional racial inequity, US higher education institutions should include initiatives which help raise both White faculty members’ and White students’ awareness about their Whiteness and steer them towards critical inquiry about normalised discourses based on White supremacy. Embedding institution wide initiatives to help White faculty and students see their normalised Whiteness and recognise their unconscious blindfold based on White superiority should be the practical initial step for improving the campus climate towards more racial equity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.