sociology essay

COLLEGE STUDENTS' EXPERIENCES OF POWER AND MARGINALITY

Sharing Spaces and Negotiating Differences

Edited by Elizabeth M. Lee and Chaise LaDousa

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data College students’ experiences of power and marginality: sharing spaces and negotiating differences / by Elizabeth M. Lee and Chaise LaDousa. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. College students—Social conditions. 2. Minority college students—Social conditions. 3- Cultural pluralism. I. Lee, Elizabeth M., editor of compilation. IL LaDousa, Chaise, editor of compilation. III. Title. LB3605.C67 2015 378. T98—dc23 2014042267

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: Power and Marginality on Campus 1 Elizabeth M. Lee

PART! Identities in Practice 9

1 At the Intersection of Race and Class: An Autoethnographic Study on the Experiences of a Southeast Asian American College Student 11 Kimberly A. Truong, Tryan L. McMickens, and Ronald E. L. Brown

2 “I Kind of'Found My People”: Latino/a College Students’ Search for Social Integration on Campus 29 Sandi Kawecka Nenga, Guillermo A. Alvarado, and Claire S. Blyth

3 Constructing “Hawaiian,” Post-Racial Narratives, and Social Boundaries at a Predominantly White University 46 Daniel Eisen

4 “That’s What Makes Our Friendships Stronger”: Supportive Friendships Based on Both Racial Solidarity and Racial Diversity

Janice McCabe 64

1 AT THE INTERSECTION OF RACE AND CLASS An Autoethnographic Study on the Experiences of a Southeast Asian American College Student

Kimberly 4. Truong, Tryan L McMickens, and Ronald E. L Brown

Introduction

According to many measures, Asian Pacific Islander and Desi American (APIDA) students have higher than average educational attainment relative to national averages. In 2013, 95 percent of APIDA 25- to 29-year-olds possessed a high­ school diploma (NCES, 2013). This is higher than the national average of 90 percent. Their bachelor degree attainment rates are also higher than the national average, 58 percent compared to 34 percent, respectively. This pattern also holds true for those who have earned master’s degrees and higher, as 21 percent of APIDA 25- to 29-year-olds have obtained these credentials, compared to only 7 percent of the entire 25- to 29-year-old population.

Because their aggregate educational attainment rates are higher than most other ethnic groups, APIDA students are considered overrepresented in educa­ tion and are perceived as the so-called model minority (Museus & Kiang, 2009; Museus & Truong, 2009). The model minority myth assumes that APIDA stu­ dents excel in academics, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and

JHatM~^lorcover, because of the this higter~avrrage ■levet-of-aehievement, some-' education researchers group APIDA populations with White students when discussing issues related to stratified access and outcomes in education (for examples see: Cowen, Fleming, Witte, & Wolf, 2012; Goldrick-Rab, 2006; Slater, 2009; Swail, Redd, & Perna, 2003).This grouping together of APIDA and White students helps to support the model minority myth. In addition, it complicates perceptions of racialization dynamics because it seems to imply that APIDA communities do not experience racism or are not people of color (Lewis, 2001; Sue, Bucceri, Lin, Nadal, & Torino, 2007; Wong, 2014). This positioning of APIDA students as “model minorities” or akin to Whites in education hides

12 Kimberly A. Truong et al.

both variation between subgroups and the challenges many APIDA students face stemming from racialization and socioeconomic disadvantage.

This assumption that APIDA students do not experience challenges within their educational experiences and their everyday lives is erroneous (Sue et al., 2007). In 2008, the National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education (CARE) published a report exposing the model minority myth, showing that APIDA populations experience both socioeconomic and educational challenges. For example, a greater percentage of Asian Americans (12.6 percent) and Pacific Islanders (17.7 percent) live below the poverty threshold than the national average of 12.4 percent. In particular, Southeast Asian, Pakistani, Korean, Thai, and Chinese subgroups within the APIDA diaspora exhibit higher than national average rates of living below the poverty threshold. APIDA sub­ groups, such as Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders also have lower educational attainment rates than the national average. Less than 10 percent of the Hmong, Cambodian, Lao, Tongan, Fijan, and Marshallese population have bachelor degrees or higher (CARE, 2008).

A growing body of literature demonstrates that APIDA communities experi­ ence racism and racialized exclusion in education, as well as dissatisfaction with the campus environment and their learning experiences (Alvarez, Juang, & Liang, 2006; Golden, 2007; Karabel, 2005; Kotori & Malaney, 2003; Lewis, Chesler, & Forman, 2000; Museus, 2008, 2009; Rankin & Reason, 2005; Sue et al., 2007; Truong & Museus,2012)7FoFrxampie,GolderT(2OO7) andKarabel (2005) docu­ mented tReTysteurie-ejrtlusion of APIDA students from elite colleges. Other scholars examined the experiences of APIDA students within higher education institutions and reported that they experienced racism, stereotypes, and hostile environments (Lewis et al., 2000; Museus, 2008). Museus (2008) found that APIDA students exposed to racism and stereotypes on their college campuses disengage and isolate themselves from faculty and administrators. In 2009, Museus and Truong published research that disaggregated APIDA data to exam­ ine their experiences with campus racial climate. They found that students who came from more diverse pre-college communities had more difficulty making the transition to college as they also reported more hostile campus climates than their counterparts who came from predominantly White pre-college communities. APIDA students from, different socioeconomic backgrounds also had different transition to college experiences (Museus, 2011; Museus & Vue, 2013; Teranishi, Ceja, antonio, Allen, & McDonough, 2004).

Museus and Truong (2009) argued that additional data on APIDA student populations be disaggregated and for researchers to examine “many facets of diversity within race” (p. 24). APIDA scholars have repeatedly advocated for this disaggregation to facilitate better understandings of the diversity within this broad grouping, challenges APIDA students experience, and how to better sup­ port their educational outcomes (CARE, 2008, 2010, 2011; Museus & Kiang, 2009; Museus & Truong, 2009; Teranishi & Nguyen, 2011—2012). More

At the Intersection of Race and Class 13

recently, the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (n.d.) has been established to improve education outcomes among other issues for the population.

In this chapter, we take a closer look at the ways in which race and class inter­ sect to create such “facets of diversity” by analyzing an autoethnographic account. This account presents the narrative of a female student of color who grew up low-income and was the first in her family to attend college. These characteristics are considered underrepresented within the higher education context. However, this student of color is also considered overrepresented in higher education because she is APIDA, presenting a seeming contradiction in terms. We seek to understand the ways that this student’s racialized and class identities complicated her higher education, despite being a member of a so-called model minority. While there is a growing body of literature that debunks the model minority myth, the master narrative that APIDA populations are excelling in higher educa­ tion is still quite prevalent (Museus & Truong, 2013). We use autoethnography as a method and Critical Race Theory as a theoretical framework to present a counternarrative to the representation of APIDAs as a monolithic, overrepre­ sented group. We also incorporate data from a study all three authors conducted on the college experiences of Southeast Asian American students in order to further contextualize the autoethnographic account. We will close by offering implications for policy and practice drawn from both sets of data.

Theoretical Framework

We approached this study from a Critical Race Theory (CRT) perspective. CRT is fundamentally concerned with understanding, deconstructing, critiquing, and questioning how race and White supremacy shape and limit access and success for students of color—in this case, APIDA students in higher education (Ladson- Billings, 1998; Solorzano, 1998; Teranishi et al., 2009). Critical race theorists contend that racism is omnipresent, widespread, invisible, and impossible to eradi­ cate (Delgado, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 1998; Solorzano, 1998). Ladson-Billings (1998) states:

[AJdopting and adapting CRT as a framework for educStromL-eqiifry means that we will have to expose racism in education and propose radical solutions for addressing it. We will have to take bold and some­ times unpopular positions. We may be pilloried figuratively or, at least, vilified for these stands.

(p. 22)

No single definition exists for CRT, but scholars describe it as comprising five or seven tenets (Harper, Patton, & Wooden, 2009). Key assumptions of two tenets that were most influential in guiding this study are discussed in the sections below.

14 Kimberly A. Truong et al.

Intersectionality

Intersectionality—a perspective proposed by Kimberle Crenshaw—maintains that there are intersections among systems of oppression (Crenshaw, 1988,1989, 1991,1995). A most commonly used example is Black feminism. Black feminism explores how the experiences of Black females ought to be understood in terms of them being Black and female independently, but also include the ways in which their identities intersect and inform each other (Collins, 1986; hooks, 1981). Similarly, Cho (1997) examined the intersectionality between race and gender in the experiences of APIDA women with sexism. It is important to also note that intersectionality means that race and racism is viewed at the intersection of gender, class, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation, and other systems of oppres­ sion (Crenshaw, 1989,1991). For example, Han (2008) explored master narratives by White gay men who oppressed APIDA gay men. Intersectionality is an appro­ priate CRT tenet to guide this study due to the ways it captures the multiple identities of students of color in college (Patton & Simmons, 2008).

Voice

Critical Race Theory recognizes that students of color have knowledge and a voice to tell their stories. It is committed to social justice, challenges dominant ideology, and exposes racial inequality. This is typically illustrated by using voice as a storytelling method to “analyze the myths, presuppositions, and perceived wisdoms that make up the common culture about race that invariably render blacks and other minorities one-down” (Delgado, 1995, p. xiv).This perspective challenges prior theoretical frameworks that often exclude the knowledge and voice of people of color in America.

Voice also involves the ways in which people of color “integrate their experi­ ential knowledge, drawn from a shared history as ‘other,’ with their ongoing struggles to transform a world deteriorating under the albatross of racial hegem­ ony” (Barnes, 1990, p. 1864). Barnes further notes that experiential knowledge is important because it exposes the differing viewpoints and social interactions among people of color and Whites.

In summary, Critical Race Theory and in particular the intersectionality and voice tenets recognize the perspectives and interconnected ways that students of color may experience oppression when navigating through higher education. Together, these tenets provide a theoretical framework for examining the experi­ ences of a Southeast Asian American student who grew up low-income and was the first in her family to attend college.

Research Design

We used an autoethnographic approach because it relies heavily on personal expe­ riences as data to create rich narratives. These narratives help us to understand an

At the Intersection of Race and Class IS

individual’s experiences as well as the world around her (Chang, 2008; Muncey, 2010). This research approach is particularly aligned with the voice tenet of Critical Race Theory; the participant/lead author is recognized and accepted as someone who has legitimate knowledge.

Chang (2008) suggested collecting personal memory data and organizing it in various ways, including autobiographical timeline, kinship diagrams, and free drawing. In our case, the lead author created an autobiographical timeline that focused mainly on how she navigated to and through higher education. It was particularly useful to have a chronological list of significant events and experi­ ences. In addition, the lead author, with the assistance of the co-authors, collected self-reflective data (Chang, 2008). Truong (lead author) had known both of the co-authors (McMickens and Brown) for seven years and 10 years, respectively. Throughout this time, Truong had conversations with both McMickens and Brown about her racialized and classed undergraduate experiences. During these discussions, she also analyzed these experiences with them. In addition to the autoethnographic account presented here, these extended conversations culmi­ nated in a broader phenomenological study focused on how Southeast Asian American students access and navigate higher education conducted jointly by the three authors. Using criterion sampling, the researchers interviewed 20 students who self-identified as being Southeast Asian American (Lao, Vietnamese, Khmer, or Hmong), attended or recently graduated from a college in New England, and attained at least a 3.0 grade point average. Individual, semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants face-to-face, or via Skype or Google Hangout, for 60-90 minutes. Finally, textual artifacts were collected and analyzed. These included high-school and college written assignments, college admissions essays, research literature, and Truong’s photographs (Chang, 2008). The results of this study underscored the role of intersectionality in Southeast Asian American stu­ dents’ college experiences and contributed to all three authors’ further collaboration on the auto-ethnographic work presented here. In this chapter we interweave the autoethnographic narrative with supporting data from the phenomenological study.

We followed the procedures for analyzing autoethnographic data as outlined by Chang (2008).These included to:

search for recurring topics, themes, and patterns; look for cultural themes; connect the present with the past; analyze relationships between self and others; compare yourself with other people’s cases; contextualize with social science constructs and ideas; and frame with theories.

(p. 131)

In presenting the narrative, we create a chronological account of Truong’s experiences as a first-generation, low-income, Southeast Asian American female student accessing higher education and her experiences in making the transition

16 Kimberly A. Truong et al.

to and through college. We supplement these accounts with our analyses as well as research and theory that support the analysis.

Truong's First-Person Narrative

I was born in Vietnam and emigrated with my family to the United States in the mid-1980s, the summer before kindergarten. My family and I had been sponsored by my paternal aunt and her husband to reside in California with them. We lived there for about a year, but there were issues with the living situation. My aunt and her husband had been living in the home with their two /daughters and the sponsorship situation added ten individuals to the household. _^Ay parents and I moved to Massachusetts to find work. Both of my parents lacked the English language skills and educational background to obtain jobs, so we depended on public assistance for much of my childhood and adoles­ cence. My mother had quit school in the sixth grade to take care of her four younger siblings, while my father had quit school in the ninth grade. My par­ ents tried to help me as much as they could with my schoolwork, but my father was only able to check my math homework up until the fifth grade when I learned about negative numbers.

Though they did not understand the daily activities I participated in at school, my parents emphasized the importance of education. They took an interest in my grades on report card days, expected progress reports on my learning at school, and attended parent-teacher conferences. Through programs like TRIO Educational Talent Search, a TRIO Educational Opportunity Center, teachers and administrators who mentored me, and peer support, I was able to access higher education.The Higher Education Act of 1965 established TRIO Programs to increase college access and persistence among underrepresented students. The first three pr. 6rams funded under TRIO focused specifically on Upward Bound, educational Talent Search (ETS), and Student Support Services (COE, 2013). Today, there are eight TRIO Programs, including Educational Opportunity Centers and the McNair Scholars Program. These programs focus on encourag­ ing low-income students and adults, first-generation college students and prospective students, and people of color to pursue higher education. Most of these programs focus on helping youth and adults access higher education and learn about financial aid.

I thought I would not be able to afford to pay for college and that community college was my only option. However, my advisor and mentor in the ETS Program, a Haitian American first-generation college graduate, advised me to apply to competitive four-year institutions that would offer me both merit-based and need-based aid. She also took me on a college tour of her alma mater, a women’s college, and let me stay in her apartment on campus for the weekend. She introduced me to some of the residents as we all spent a Friday night talking about the college experience and opportunities.

At the Intersection of Race and Class 17

I fell in love with the concept of women’s colleges and decided to apply to three of them during my senior year in high school. However, a guidance coun­ selor dissuaded me from applying to one particular women’s college because she stated there were a lot of lesbians who attended the school. She tried to persuade me to apply to a Christian college and discouraged me from applying to a Jewish- affiliated institution. In the end, I decided to enroll at one of the institutions the administrator had tried to talk me out of.

The college I attended was a small research-intensive university located 20 minutes from home in the suburbs of a large city. The school offered me a gener­ ous financial aid package. It had a strong academic program and was nationally ranked. A couple of things that I did not consider until I attended the institution was that it was predominantly White and served mainly upper-middle-class students, many of whom were not the first in their families to attend college. At the time, I did not know that these would be issues for me. I was simply grateful that I had the opportunity to attend a four-year institution, five in a residence hall, and develop as a person and student.

College was ironically the first time I learned that I fit into an umbrella cat­ egory of “Asian American,” a term that I was never aware of until I got to college. (I did not learn the term APIDA until more recently.) In my high-school years, I did not have many Asian American friends. Most of the Asians around me were recent immigrants, and many of our conversations focused on me not being Asian or Vietnamese “enough” and being “White-washed,” partly because I did not have a Vietnamese accent when I spoke English and because I understood American pop culture. On the other hand, my White friends and acquaintances in high school sometimes tokenized me and would ask me what it was like to be Asian. It always felt like I had to be either Asian or American and that they were mutually exclusive. Frances Chow (2008) documents similar experiences in her untitled digital story about her struggles with being Asian American around Asians and Whites.

The concept of being both Asian and American therefore did not occur to me, until college. It was the first time I met a significant (to me, anyway) number of Asians who were not recent immigrants. Rather, many of them were second-, third-, or fourth-generation in the United States. Some of them were 1.5-generation like me. I remember thinking, “Wow! I don’t feel like I have to prove my Asian- ness to these peers,” because they never questioned why I didn’t have a Vietnamese accent when I was born inVietnam or why I liked classic rock music, reggae, 80s pop, and other types of music. It was great that I could connect with a peer over A-Ha’s Take on Me and not have to explain why I didn’t watch Paris by Night and Asia series that featured Vietnamese singers and pop stars.

Despite these new similarities, I struggled to manage the evident socioeco­ nomic differences between myself and new college friends and peers. It was only when I arrived at college that I realized my identity was low-income and there­ fore different from the other students around me. I noticed that my peers drove

18 Kimberly A. Truong et al.

new, luxury cars when my parents had just purchased an old, used car a month prior to me going to college. They talked about how their parents had college degrees or advanced degrees. Some were in executive positions at well-known companies, others were college professors, and still others were engineers. Finances didn’t seem like an issue to many of my peers as they didn’t think twice about spending money on the weekends on social gatherings, clothes, or food. Similarly, a Hmong student in our Southeast Asian American study commented,

Coming from a working class family and going to [institution], it was really difficult for me to accept the fact that everybody else could do stuff, not me. And, I was kind of, it was not disappointing, kind of lonely actually, because people go and spend hundreds of dollars a night, when I can’t even spend 20, so, while they would go out, I would just stay in my room.

Some of the conversations I had with peers made me feel like they did not understand my situation. During one conversation with an Asian American friend, he had mentioned pool-hopping in his neighborhood. I asked him to clarify what he meant and he said that it was when groups of friends would “hop

:nces to jump into one neighbor’s pool and then hop fences to jump in another ’ghbor’s pool.” He concluded expectantly, “You know, what all of us suburban

do.” I responded that I didn’t know and that I grew up in the projects. During this time, I came to mainly self-identify as low-income rather than by

race; at that point in my educational career, 1 did not know the concept of inter- sectionality or understand how these identities could co-exist and even impact upon one another. Perhaps this was because I was raised in an education system that espoused colorblindness and there were no administrators to help me to unpack those experiences that based on being a student of color. I realize now in hindsight that I was also struggling during this time to locate a racial identity, but found no one whom I could talk with about discomfort with all of the segre­ gated spaces on college campuses—how to understand it, unpack it, and know that it is normal and okay to feel uncomfortable.

Being racialized as Asian American and being low-income were difficult expe­ riences in and of themselves, and these statuses shaped my college experiences in confusing ways. For example, most of my friends and acquaintances in college were Asian American and it was expected that I sit with them at the cafeteria. T?owever, when students were “sitting together at the cafeteria” based on racial/ ethnic and affinity group, I opted out. It felt uncomfortable to me to congregate in a space based on us belonging to a racial group because I never had conversa­ tions with some of them prior to sitting in the cafeteria together. It is perfectly natural for students to sit together by racial and ethnic as well as affinity groups as it is a normal part of racial identity development (Tatum, 1997), but I always felt uncomfortable doing it because I didn’t have that much in common with the

At the Intersection of Race and Class 19

other APIDA students because many of them came from middle- and upper-class backgrounds. Very few of the Asian Americans were first-generation or low- income. Out of the 800 or so students in my entering class, I only knew two other Asian Americans who were first-generation and low-income. I remember feeling disappointment that my friends weren’t more like the ones in high school who were much more economically, racially, and ethnically diverse. Many of my peers would talk about middle-class things that I wasn’t aware of with the assumption that I came from a middle-class background. Because of my class background, I also didn’t share the same conceptions of what college was “about.” For example, I didn’t know that I was supposed to spend a lot of time sitting, eating, and socializing in the cafeteria with friends. As a first-generation college student, I was unaware that it was part of the college-going culture to learn from others in this space and that it was okay to have 1-2 hour conversations over lunch. I thought that mealtime was for eating food quickly so that I could spend the rest of my time to devote to other things. While I did have a few friends who came from low-income backgrounds, that also seemed weird. I also didn’t know how to invite friends who weren’t APIDA to sit at the “Asian corner.” When it came to meal times, I often took my food to go and ate by myself in my residence hall room.

While I made friends through Orientation, in my classes, in my residence hall^ and co-curricular activities, I never felt fully comfortable as a student throughout my four years. What I couldn’t articulate then like I can now is that I felt invisible and I did not feel a sense of belonging; the lack of students “like me” coupled with the lack of mainstream support services made me feel like I was a visitor rather than a student at the institution.(ln other words?! feltcompletely mafgfrF* alized by the lack of structural diversity on campus. The institution was predominantly White with very few students of color on campus, a stark contrast from my high school experience where students of color made up about 50 percent of the student body. While it was the first time I met APIDA students, they still made up a very small percentage of the student population. More spe­ cifically, Southeast Asian Americans made up an even smaller percentage of the APIDA population on campus. The institution also lacked other racial and ethnic groups, low-income students, and first-generation students. It felt like 90 percent of the student body was White. uppet~-aad-middkwJa«^tiiden<»-wbaJwtfpmT,nB' widLadvaneedTfegTCesJHarper et al. (2011) call this “onlyness” and defined it as me psychoemotional burden of having to strategically navigate a racially politi­

cized space occupied by few peers, role models, and guardians from one’s same race or ethnic groi^^ct90X ---- TtflsTeelmgof “onlyness” made the transition from high school to college difficult. I became the epitome of a disengaged student: I was academically prepared for col­ lege, but I had not expected to experience cnlmre chqclJVhe.se'7r^^ exacerbated by pressure from my family and pressures I felt as a so-called model minority. I also did not take into account how to iuggle home and family life with

20 Kimberly A. Truong et al.

school. I was raised in a strict family and since I’m the oldest, I had to set a good example for my younger sibling. It was hard to explain why I couldn’t come home every weekend and why I wasn't in my dorm room at night when my parents called (even if it was for a ballroom-dancing class). I still made the most of the freedom that college gave me in terms of how to allocate my time, som ething I had not anticipated. I totally took advantage of the free time and wasted it frivolously in my first semester (and beyond). Being a first-generation student was difficult as I had to often explain things to my parents that most college-educated parents already knew. For example, while my parents supported my decision and encour­ aged me to enroll in college, I had to explain what I was studying and what jobs I was capable of obtaining after I graduated. It was a bit difficult to describe what a liberal arts background meant and that being a Fine Arts and Politics double major could lead to real career trajectories. They would often encourage me to study engineering because it led to engineering jobs. By contrast, my double major was difficult for them to grasp because there was no clearly linked career path. It also made it difficult for them to explain to our extended family members and friends: part of the reason my mom especially wanted me to get an engineering degree is that a couple of her cousins are engineers. She saw how they were able to obtain jobs quickly and were paid well. She said that she wanted me to be able to have a life that we weren’t able to have while I was growing up, one where I didn’t have to worry about money. Museus (2013) has examined the role of family in Southeast Asian students’ educational plans. He found that parents expected students to attend college, but also pressured them into pursuing certain careers.

The impact of the model minority myth manifested by adding pressure for me to succeed and making me feel like a failure when I didn’t. For example, Asians are perceived as “nerds” who do well in school and are particularly adept in STEM subjects (Sue et al., 2007). I have always struggled with math in school and even earned Cs and Ds in high-school geometry. I would wake up at 6:00 a.m. every morning my sophomore year in high school in order to get extra tutorials from the teacher before class. Yet, nothing I did helped in learning geometry proof concepts. Because the model minority stereotype is something that I had to deal with throughout my academic experiences (teachers and countless class­ mates told me that “Asians are smart,” “Asians are good in math,” and “Asians are nerds”), I often wondered what was wrong with me. Without anyone to help me unpack this stereotype, I often felt the need to prove myself and show that I was “smart.”A multiethnic Cambodian,Thai, and Chinese student made similar com­ ments about how the model minority myth made him feel like he had to be naturally smart. He stated:

I’ve always been afraid to ask for help. It goes back me to me being an Asian American because I’ve always been expected to do things on my own. If I can’t do anything on my own, I’m seen as a failure and I still internalize that notion.

At the Intersection of Race and Class 21

Finally, my anxiety and frustration on campus were further spurred by microaggressions in the classroom. After first semester, I barely attended my classes because of this discomfort. In one sociology course, a White student raised her hand and said, “Poor people like being poor because they get free stuff.” I raised my hand to respond to her, but the professor moved on to a different. topic_and did not engage her or challengeher on her assumptioifTB another course, I was told by the professor that rnyfatheFsTirst hame-was a middle name rather than a first name. The professor insisted I was wrong because he had lived in Vietnam for two years and knew all about Vietnamese culture. While other classes did not always result in such explicit affronts, my experiences remained invisible and excluded from the course curriculum throughout my college courses. For example, a course I took on families focused exclusively on families of European descent. In the one course that focused on the history ofVietnam, the curriculum was arranged around a deficit perspective that presented my homeland as a helpless pawn. Instead of regularly attending these and other classes, I stayed in my room to sleep or watch television.

All of these factors led me to earning a grade point average of 2.3 in my first semester of college. I was put on academic warning and on academic probation for my presidential scholarship. I soon learned to navigate college in unproductive ways by isolating myself from predominantly White and upper-middle-class spaces. Unfortunately, this meant staying away from most spaces on campus. In all ( of my racialized and classed experiences, I don’t remember having any student affairs or residential life educators provide targeted programming or support that reached me.

Perhaps the only space on campus where I felt fully comfortable outside my dorm room was at the TRIO office. I was a member of the Student Support Services Program, which focuses on helping to retain first-generation college students, low-income students, and students of color. It was the only space that focused on my intersectional identity by offering programs that engaged me as a raced and classed student. The support and mentoring I received from this program had a huge impact on me. The counselors helped me to get through my undergraduate years both academically and personally. They also encouraged me to pursue doctoral study and prepared me for it. Without this program, I might not have persisted through college because I would not have had anyone to talk to about my racialized and classed experi­ ences. I also would not have had the opportunity to meet other students of color who were also from low-income backgrounds. I most definitely would not have had the encouragement to pursue doctoral study. I was lucky enough to have these support services while other students did not. A Hmong student in the Southeast Asian American study discussed how there weren’t support services available to her on campus and attributed it to the model minority myth. She stated:

22 Kimberly A, Truong et al.

I have realized is that at [institution], that is something that I’m perceived to be, that I fit the model minority trope. People don’t understand that I come from an immigrant background, or a low-income background, and so that was definitely something that I had to adjust to. It actually relates to the model minority stereotype, and that’s the lack of resources available to Asian American students, because we are perceived to be a community that has honorary White status, and do not have issues any more. And so, with that it’s not having academic support resources and having faculty and staff not understand why the Asian American student would need that extra help. Because they assume that I come from a background where I’m used to that or that I have resources always available to me, to help with that.

I really valued the TRIO staff who dedicated so much of their time and energy to support me and other underrepresented students on campus. Had I not known, about TRIO as a high-school student, I probably would not have looked for their services as a college student. Even though I was lucky to have been sup­ ported by the TRIO staff, I also recognized how overworked they were. Because the counselors worked with many first-generation students, they often acted as a “one-stop shop,” in which students received academic counseling, career coun­ seling, and other types of support, because students were unaware of or felt uncomfortable seeking these services from other offices on campuses. I did not feel like my academic counselor understood my circumstances as a low-income, first-generation college student when I spoke to her as a first-year student. I spoke with my TRIO counselor who told me that she could act as my academic counselor. Looking back on this now, I also recognize that the university relied heavily on TRIO to operate as it did, instead of pursuing an intentional and comprehensive approach to support underrepresented students.TRIO was not as highly resourced as other offices on campus as reflected in its three staff members. When one of the TRIO programs was defunded by the federal government due to a competitive grant proposal cycle, the university did not replace it with another, similar program.

While research suggests that some students avoid student support programming (Museus, 2008), I do not believe I did this. Indeed, part of the reason I have been able to navigate predominantly White spaces is that I often searched for sources of support from different programs. I also acknowledge that student affairs administrators may often have other priorities than planning program­ ming for such a specific and small population. Yet, I felt invisible on the college campus, particularly since I was unable to engage with many other students in conversations about race, class, and other forms of diversity. Several researchers have discussed how institutions of higher education can create opportunities for students to learn about diversity issues on their college campuses (Chang, Chang, & Ledesma, 2005; Harper & antonio, 2007;

At the Intersection of Race and Class 23

Quaye & Harper, 2007).They have power to create structural diversity within their institutions and to help facilitate conversations about identity and oppression. Yet, these institutions are negligent in planning both academic and co-curricular activities to engage these students in critical discussions about these topics.

Although TRIO and my dorm room were the only campus spaces I felt fully comfortable, I was able to make do with it. I eventually got used to feeling uncomfortable with White and upper-middlc-class spaces on campus. It wasn’t that my feelings changed about how I felt in these spaces, but my thoughts changed about how I lived and interacted with others in them. Having had this undergraduate experience helped prepare me for a life of interacting with others in predominantly White and middle- and upper-income spaces in the working world and graduate school. This preparation has been described in the education literature as ‘learning cross-context’ and being ready to respond to race and racism after college, according to McMickens (2012). As an undergraduate student at the time, I could not articulate these feelings or thoughts. Reflecting back, I realize that these were the survival skills that I developed having to navigate oppressive spaces: I had to learn to deal with feelings of isolation and being marginalized. This has been supported in the research on how students deal with microaggres­ sions and racism; they find counterspaces and continue navigating (Solorzano, 1998;Truong & Museus, 2012).

My experiences with TRIO during the time I was an undergraduate stu­ dent left a lasting impression on me, and I eventually pursued graduate degrees so that I could help support students who struggled with the same problems I confronted. My graduate experiences sometimes were similarly painful, but they helped enlighten me. I learned more about how to make sense of my own racialized, gendered, and classed experiences through studying Critical Race Theory. I pursued research to help me better under­ stand the experiences I had navigating educational and work spaces. This year, I accepted an administrative fellowship that allows me to put my knowledge and experience into practice working with college students by conducting assessments and planning intentional programs that focus on their intersectional identities.

Implications

While this autoethnography is by nature deeply self-reflective, I hope that this narrative has successfully communicated several points to readers. Consistent with the voice tenet of CRT, I hope it contributes to the growing chorus of student voices, those who feel ignored, invisible and/or marginalized in society This aspiration reflects the responsibility I feel as a professional who has been afforded the privilege of publishing this chapter while many students like me may not have had the support to persist to college graduation. Furthermore, I

24 Kimberly A. Truong et al.

hope that sharing my experiences serves as encouragement to all who search for a sense of belonging in higher education and beyond. As someone who benefitted from supportive efforts such as TRIO programs, I hope that I am able to offer the same support to others. Finally, as a scholar, I hope my self­ reflections provide a usefill portrayal of the, complexities inherent in livingyp the-Hrterseetieft-eAdentitrcsf in this case being at once Asian, American, low-

/income, and a first-generation college student/graduate,! The alienation and disengagement I initially experienced as a result of these intersections proved to not be the end of the story but rather the beginning of a continual process of self-reflection and growth.

This chapter adds to the growing body of literature on APIDA students and their racialized experiences (Alvarez et al., 2006; Golden, 2007; Karabel, 2005; Kotori & Malaney, 2003; Lewis et al., 2000; Museus, 2008, 2009; Rankin & Reason, 2005; Sue et al., 2007;Truong & Museus, 2012).While the master nar­ rative of the APIDA population is one that encompasses the model minority myth and therefore presents APIDA students as overachieving, this autoethnog­ raphy sheds light on the struggles that APIDA students may encounter in their quest for higher education. Using an intersectional lens, it sheds light on stu­ dent’s challenges navigating to and through college as a racialized and classed body. Several implications for policy and practice can be offered based on the p^rrative presented.

First, researchers and policy-makers should discontinue grouping APIDAs with White students and disaggregate data on APIDAs. Conflating APIDAs with Whites in education research confuses the general public about very different populations. These groups have distinct characteristics. APIDAs cer­ tainly are not White as they experience racism. The act of grouping these two racial groups together is itself an act of racism in that it assumes that APIDA students do not experience challenges or have unmet needs because of their racialized positions. Moreover, echoing previous calls by APIDA scholars, we stress that higher education policymakers and researchers should disaggregate data on the APIDA population to highlight the diversity within this racial group (Museus, 2011; Museus &Vue, 2013,Teranishi et al., 2004). By disag­ gregating data on this population, we can shed light on the challenges and needs of APIDA subpopulations.

Second, institutions of higher education should create inclusive campus Gui­ des for all students, including APIDA students.They should assess their campus

cultures using intersectionality as a framework to understand the experiences of their diverse student body. They should also implement programs and policies to help make their campus a space where all students feel welcome, rather than creating isolated counterspaces for those students who feel marginalized and ignored. For instance, faculty should be intentional in using course texts that reflect multiple perspectives in their classroom and facilitate rich discussions that challenge students to think more critically about the course content. Student

At the Intersection of Race and Class 25

affairs administrators should include intersections] programming that will engage marginalized populations as well as educate the study body about chal­ lenges these students might face. They could and should be intentional in creating targeted support systems for students who are disengaged and marginal­ ized on their campuses. In essence, faculty and administrators have power to create institutional change (Harper & antonio, 2007; Quaye & Harper, 2007) and enable a sense of belonging for all students in American higher education (Strayhorn, 2012).

Acknowledgment

We wish to thank the Asian American Student Success Program at UMass Boston for their research grant.

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