“Fresh off the boat?” racial microaggressions that target South Asian Canadian students.

Abstract

The present study sought to examine South Asian Canadian undergraduate students' (N ϭ 7) experiences with racial microaggressions at a research-intensive Canadian university. Participants ranged in age from 19-23 years and comprised various ethnic groups (e.g., Indian, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, and Tamil). Data were collected during a semistructured focus group interview and were analyzed using the consensual qualitative research method (Hill, Thompson, & Williams, 1997). Eight themes emerged. Novel themes included the following: perceived as fresh off the boat, excluded from social life, notion that being Brown is a liability, assumption of ties to terrorism, and compelled to be a cultural expert. Three additional themes were consistent with prior research on Asian Americans (Sue, Bucceri, Lin, Nadal, & Torino, 2007): ascription of intelligence in stereotypical domains, invalidation of interethnic and racial differences, and treated as invisible. Implications for research and campus interventions are discussed.

Microaggressions: Clarification, Evidence, and Impact

“…The term started as a way to describe the common experiences of African Americans (Pierce, 1970; Smith, Allen, & Danley, 2007), but other groups experience frequent microaggressions as well, including Asian Americans (Nadal, Vigilia Escobar, Prado, David, & Haynes, 2012; Ong, Burrow, Fuller-Rowell, Ja, & Sue, 2013), Hispanic Americans (Huynh, 2012; Yosso, Smith, Ceja, & Solórzano, 2009), Native Americans/American Indians (Jones & Galliher, 2015; Walls, Gonzalez, Gladney, & Onello, 2015), Asian and Indigenous Canadians (Canel-Çınarbasş & Yohani, 2019; D. A. Clark, Kleiman, Spanierman, Isaac, & Poolokasingham, 2014; Poolokasingham, Spanierman, Kleiman, & Houshmand, 2014), and others. Arab Americans are also subjected to microaggressions, but because individuals of Middle Eastern descent are not officially recognized as an ethnic minority group, research is sparse, and many instances of discrimination are not documented (Awad, 2010).…”

Engaging South Asian youth and families: A clinical review

“…From an inter-community perspective, SAA youth and families often must contend with microaggression (McMurtry et al, 2019) and macroaggression (Ekanayake et al, 2012; Paradies et al, 2015; Patel, 2019) based on appearance, religion, assumption of foreignness and intelligence. They range from aspersions of terrorism due to being brown-skinned (Poolokasingham et al, 2014; Sundar, 2008) or wearing a turban or hijab (Rana et al, 2019) to being treated as perpetual foreigners (Devos & Banaji, 2005). The ascription of intelligence to SA youth is closely linked to the model minority stereotype.…”

The India Face Set: International and Cultural Boundaries Impact Face Impressions and Perceptions of Category Membership

“…The observed misclassification of outgroup faces may have considerable real-world consequences, for example in forensic settings where law enforcement officers may use either explicitly or implicitly a suspect’s ethnicity. Likewise, some research suggests that, post 9/11, South Asians living in the United States experienced misclassification as Middle Eastern, resulting in identity threat, stereotyping, and prejudice ( Joshi, 2006 ; Bhatia, 2008 ; Poolokasingham et al, 2014 ).…”