| This study examines the multiple understandings and meanings Chinese American and Filipina/o American students construct around their racial identities. Their dynamic and multilayered constructions of Asian American identities -- as a political coalition; as shared experiences of racialization and racism; as unspoken bonds of community and comfort; and as simultaneous identities -- created space for the myriad ways of being Asian American. Their narratives demonstrated the ways that identities are constantly in flux and in the process of being constructed, and how their identities are involved in simultaneous paradoxical dialogues between the individual-collective and the personal-social. That is, their identities internally formed through personal experiences while impacted by social relationships and politics. It is a constant process of negotiation, choice, and comfort while still holding on to some core sense of self. Students' self-conceptions were constantly changing -- often depending on immediate context, assumptions, comfort level, relationships, and interactions -- even when they had a strong sense of their identities. What it meant, collectively and individually, to be Asian American (or Chinese American and Filipina/o American) was a dynamic process of constant re/negotiation and re/definition.;The results of this study can be used to better inform policies, practice, and pedagogies in higher education, as well as to contribute to current understandings of race and identity. This study provides new perspectives to understand Asian American students as agents in educational contexts to negotiate, confront, and resist stereotypes and racism in higher education. This study also adds to the existing literature on Asian American undergraduate experiences by offering an alternative framework for understanding racial identities, and by centering their experiences in their own voices. I use a critical approach and a holistic framework for understanding Asian American racial identity are necessary to better illuminate the implicit assumptions of identity and race; as well as a social justice lens and framework grounded in critical theory that works within the intersections power, identity, and race. I hope to reframe the experiences of Asian Americans as another community of color struggling for power, agency, and place. |
