“Over-zealous Parents, Over-programmed Families”: Asian Americans, Academic Achievement, and White Supremacy

Abstract

Discussions of white supremacy focus on patterns of whites’ stature over people of color across institutions. When a minority group achieves more than whites, it is not studied through the lens of white supremacy. For example, arguments of white supremacy in K-12 schools focus on the disfranchisement of African Americans and Latinxs. Discussions of high-achieving Asian American students have not been framed as such and, in fact, can be used to argue against the existence of white privilege. This article explains why this conception is false. White supremacy can be active even when people of color achieve more than whites. Drawing from interviews and observations of mostly white educators in Boston suburbs that have a significant presence of Asian American students, I demonstrate that even when Asian Americans outcompete whites in schools, white supremacy is active through two means. First, Asian Americans are applauded in ways that fit a model minority stereotype and frame other groups as not working hard enough. Second and more significantly, Asian Americans encounter anti-Asian stereotypes and are told to assimilate into the model of white educators. This treatment is institutionalized within the school system through educators’ practices and attitudes. These findings somewhat support but mostly contrast the notion of “honorary whiteness,” for they show that high-achieving minorities are not just tools of white supremacy toward other people of color but also targets of it themselves. Understanding how high-achieving minorities experience institutionalized racism demonstrates the far reach of white supremacy.

New Experimental Evidence on Anti-Asian Bias in White Parents’ School Preferences

“…When test scores are equal, White parents, on average, prefer schools with fewer Asian students at all racial composition thresholds. These findings are consistent with qualitative case studies that find high-SES White parents and teachers disparage schools with larger percentages of Asian students (Dhingra 2021;Jime ´nez and Horowitz 2013;Lung-Amam 2017;Warikoo 2022). In this article, we show anti-Asian biases affect school preferences among a geographically and socioeconomically diverse White parent sample.…”

“…In Models 2 and 3 of Table 4, we find White parents do not rate schools with more Asian students as places where children are more hardworking or competitive, two racial stereotypes noted in prior qualitative work (Dhingra 2021; Jiménez and Horowitz 2013; Warikoo 2020, 2022). However, respondents did rate schools with higher test scores as higher on these two characteristics.…”

“…For these subsamples, when respondents were provided with explicit test score data, the percentage of Asian students in schools had no effect on their ratings on these academic questions. These results suggest past qualitative research that finds these academic-related biases among White parents in high-SES communities with large Asian populations (e.g., Dhingra 2021; Jiménez and Horowitz 2013; Warikoo 2022) may not hold among a more demographically diverse sample of high-SES White parents. Alternatively, whereas past qualitative research has focused on middle and high schools, our study focuses on White parents’ elementary school preferences.…”

“…Scholars have found White Americans believe Asian Americans are less friendly and warm than other racial groups (Kim 2007). Within the context of schools, recent qualitative studies found that White teachers and parents describe Asian students and parents in their communities as less sociable than people of other racial groups (Dhingra 2021; Jiménez and Horowitz 2013; Lung-Amam 2017; Warikoo 2020, 2022). For instance, examining a Silicon Valley suburb, Lung-Amam (2017:77) found that White parents described Asian students as “robotic” and argued that “the Asian culture does not operate like ours in a social sense.”Warikoo (2022) found affluent White parents in a Northeast suburb expressed similar stereotypes about Asian students and their parents.…”