‘Weird’ to be Asian: Racism and Interculturality in an Elite Girls’ School

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the ways an elite girls’ secondary school context influences one Vietnamese Australian schoolgirl's engagement with interculturality. As well as thinking about and interacting with others respectfully and equitably, interculturality encompasses thinking reflexively about the influence of one's own background, and systems of power, on such thoughts and interactions. Analysis is based on interviews conducted with Kate (a pseudonym) when she was in Years 7–9 of secondary school and aged approximately 12–15 years old. I argue that Kate's awareness of ways she is minoritised and/or marginalised at school help her to identify and critique structural racism. However, I also highlight that Kate's relative success within Kirkswood College's highly competitive academic environment impedes her ability to critique inequity. This is because her take-up of discourses of self-improvement and meritocracy potentially hinder her ability to recognise structural bias.

KEYWORDS:

• Other
• class
• race
• Asian Australian
• model minority
• subjectivity
• intersectionality

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number LP120200319]. I would like to thank Claire Charles, Christine Halse, Brandi Fox, Jessica Walton and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on drafts of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In this paper, the names of participants, their schools and suburbs are all pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number LP120200319].