Rejecting the “Minority but not Underrepresented Minority” Expectational Default: Racial Invisibilization in Higher Education by Daniel D. Liou and Jeongeun Kim

During the COVID-19 pandemic, members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community experienced higher risks of health complications and death from both the virus and economic downturns (Huang et al. 2023; Yan et al. 2021). Some public officials began to refer to the coronavirus as “China virus,” connecting race and place to the devastating consequences of the pandemic. This racialization began to reverberate in social and mass media, activating racial fears and increasing hate crimes against AAPI individuals (Darling-Hammond et al. 2020).

Despite increased Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives across higher education, there was little effort to directly and earnestly confront anti-Asian racism in this period. To situate AAPI faculty’s experiences at the intersection of the pandemic and anti-Asian racism, it is important to first understand the two long-repudiated anti-Asian ideologies that have continued to persist in society: the “model minority” and the “perpetual foreigner.” First, the model minority stereotype has been utilized to overgeneralize all AAPIs as super-achievers, resulting in post-racial and race-evasive counterarguments against DEI initiatives. Second, the unassimilable alien stereotype has positioned AAPIs as forever foreigners, despite generations of people born in the United States (Kim and Cooc 2021; Ng, Lee, and Pak, 2007). These two stereotypes are deeply entrenched as America’s expectational defaults, and their duality depicts AAPIs as the “yellow peril,” an invasive group of villains who pose an existential threat to America (Lim 2014). These stereotypes have historically been weaponized by public officials and mass media to scapegoat AAPIs during various economic downturns.

In higher education, faculty experiences with these stereotypes are extensions of America’s racial contract. As a critique of the normative social contract theory, Mills (1997) illuminates the racial contract to expose the hypocrisy that assumes all citizens are equal beneficiaries of society. Mills (1997) contends that women and people of color are subjugated to a subordinated contract through inequitable treatment. The racial contract theory provides an analytic framework for exposing the effects of the model minority and perpetual foreigner stereotypes, and the double standard to which AAPI faculty are subjugated in systems of higher education. For example, AAPIs may theoretically be protected by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 2021 COVID Hate Crime Act, and the most recent higher-education DEI efforts, but in reality, AAPI faculty are faced with substandard treatment, which only intensified in the context of the pandemic.

To highlight the salience of the racial contract, we interrogate the “minority but not underrepresented minority” classification—first defined by the National Science Foundation in describing the representational status of Asian Americans in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields—that subjugates AAPI faculty into a state of racial invisibilization. AAPI faculty are presumed to no longer need affirmative action policies (Lee 2021); however, AAPI faculty have continued to be racially subjugated to a substandard professional contract, wherein their research, teaching, and leadership are undervalued and unaccounted for in traditional matrices of faculty evaluation (Amos 2015; Hune 2019). The assumption of their equal status in higher education has also excluded them from important conversations about racial equity. Museus, Maramba, and Teranishi (2023) spark our interest in theorizing the dynamic of racial invisibilization. We define racial invisibilization as an epistemic distortion wherein the polarization about AAPIs’ presumed immunity to racism undermines the visibility of their everyday reality as the racial Other. We consider racial invisibilization to be one of the worst forms of epistemic injustice, as it serves as a racial contract that negates the credibility of AAPIs’ experiences with racism, creating an environment wherein AAPIs’ racialized experiences of disrespect, silencing, and invalidation are rendered invisible, perpetuating the commonly accepted expectations about AAPIs.

During the pandemic, we both personally observed the salience of the racial contract in higher education. For example, one of our AAPI colleagues had his previously approved sabbatical revoked while he was forced to take on additional program-level responsibilities without compensation. He was told that the provost-approved sabbatical was not valid and that if he “does not like what [he] is doing [coordinating the program], [he] can take [his] work elsewhere.” Our colleague believed the comment was racially motivated, as the administrator was weaponizing the COVID-19 economic downturn to bully him into working more for less money. By comparison, his non-Asian colleagues were given additional support for taking on similar duties, such as course reassignments and summer stipends.

Another of our AAPI faculty colleagues noticed a widespread gender wage gap at her university. During the pandemic, she was inundated with service responsibilities while she continued producing scholarship at a higher level than many of her White and male colleagues. After unsuccessfully pointing out this inequitable treatment to her administrator, she decided to transition to a different institution, sensing that her years of contribution were devalued. Although the pandemic has technically ended, these two colleagues continue to contemplate the reasons they were excluded from equitable treatment in the workplace and under DEI initiatives.

As faculty, we have seen search committees bypass highly qualified AAPI faculty candidates, undermining their qualifications and expertise, because these individuals do not neatly fit into their image of an “ideal” candidate. Moreover, we have witnessed AAPI faculty candidates marginalized during their campus visits, where non-Asian graduate students and faculty submit negative reviews about their accents and teaching abilities, while such standards are not applied to other researchers whose first language is not English. We have seen universities placing heavier service workloads on AAPI faculty members, knowing that their vulnerable temporary visa status would prevent them from speaking out. Along with these challenges, the COVID-related disruptions to AAPI faculty’s research productivity and the dual threats of illness and hate crimes only further invisibilized the depth and intensity of anti-Asian racism.

To challenge anti-Asian racism and reimagine more compassionate and equitable systems of higher education, higher education leaders must take decisive action to reject the “minority but not underrepresented minority” classification as the basis of the racial contract. This requires institutions to reorient their mission, purpose, and financial models toward antiracism in all of its forms. Currently, there is a severe lack of leadership opportunities for AAPIs to generate the political power to support higher education in systematically confronting anti-Asian racism in impactful ways. Without a clearer understanding of anti-Asian racism and the histories and experiences of this population, it is nearly impossible for the educational system to uphold its legal, moral, and ethical responsibility to foster true justice.

One starting point to consider is to include AAPI faculty in providing intellectual and organizational leadership, in fully addressing negative campus racial climates and racial invisibilization, and in actively participating in strategic planning to further diversify the faculty and curricula. None of these first steps is possible without the allocation of additional resources and an infusion of AAPI faculty and other faculty of color. The systems of higher education must consider anti-Asian racism as a legitimate form of racism.

As stated by Kumashiro (2023), the post-pandemic era brings us yet another opportunity to “reframe” higher education’s mission and governance and to mobilize the campus community to reject the “normalcy” and contribute to social justice movements. It is the time to hear the voices of AAPI faculty, pay attention to their experiences, and reevaluate the taken-for-granted objectives of higher education to make it just for all.

About the Scholars

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References

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