Inclusions and exclusions: racial categorizations and panethnicities in higher education

Abstract

Research concerned with race in higher education often utilizes terms like Asian American, AAPI, API, APA, and APIDA interchangeably, with a limited grounding in theories of racial formation and panethnicity. Without adequate conceptual grounding, haphazard uses of such terms can lead to imprecise scholarship; and worse, perpetuate a form of racial and ethnic erasure and violence. To advance and expand theories of race in higher education research, we offer a framework of panethnic formations by reviewing theories of panethnicity, racial formation and critical race theory, demonstrating that panethnic formations and race are always in flux. We encourage theoretical intentionality and specificity in the use of racial terminology, directly grounded in relevant scholarship on panethnicity and race. This article expands theoretical considerations in research related to race, ethnicity, and panethnicity in higher education.

Keywords:

• Panethnicity
• Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
• race
• higher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Similar labels include Asian Pacific American (APA), Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA), Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander (AANAPI).

2 Some scholars also consider Afghanistan and Myanmar as South Asian.

3 Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPIs) and Pacific Islanders (PIs) are used interchangeably for the purpose of synthesizing various pieces of scholarship on these communities. However, we recognize that Native Hawaiians have a unique relationship to the U.S. in terms of colonization, which is further exacerbated by the fact that Hawai’i continues to operate under the control of the U.S. government as a state.

4 Quotations in this section come from individual interviews conducted in 2008 with ten student leaders from the Count Me In campaign. For more information on the data collection and methods see Poon et al. (2017).

5 https://youtu.be/_9bqKJF3bkM

6 https://www.facebook.com/groups/naspaapikca/permalink/10154514321700278/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Demeturie Toso-Lafaele Gogue

Demeturie Toso-Lafaele Gogue is a Ph.D. student at UCLA.

OiYan A. Poon

OiYan A. Poon, Ph.D., is a program officer at the Spencer Foundation.

Dina C. Maramba

Dina C. Maramba, Ph.D., is a professor of higher education at Claremont Graduate University's School of Educational Studies.

Vijay Kanagala

Vijay Kanagala, Ph.d., is an associate professor of Secondary and Higher Education and Coordinator of the Higher Education in Student Affairs Program in the School of Education at Salem State University.