Racial Attitudes and Asian Pacific Americans

Demystifying the Model Minority

Karen Kurotsuchi Inkelas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781135525477
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica multiculturale

This study examines the complex sources and implications of the racial attitudes of Asian Pacific American (APA) college students, who, as one of the fastest growing demographics in higher education enrollments, play an increasingly significant role in campus race relations.

Chapter One

Problem and Context

At the beginning of the 21^st century, race continues to be one of the most explosive issues in American higher education. Over the past four decades, college students’ racial attitudes regarding multiculturalism and/or diversity have attracted widespread attention in both the popular media and scholarly exchange (Altbach, 1991). Yet, the voices of Asian Pacific Americans, one of the fastest growing minority groups in American colleges and universities (Escueta & O’Brien, 1995), have been relatively absent from these conversations in both the public and academic realms—even among those parties who seek to promote diversity in higher education. Instead, Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) are often overlooked in research and dialogue concerning students’ racial attitudes.

Largely due to the legacy of institutionalized discrimination against African Americans, naturally, much of the focus on racial attitudes in higher education was given to Black/White student relations. Until recently (e.g., Astin, 1993; Cabrera & Nora, 1994; Hurtado, 1992; Schaefer, 1987; White & Sedlacek, 1987), the views of students from other racial/ethnic groups—namely Asian, Latino, and Native American students—have been conspicuously absent from research on race in higher education. The results from these ground breaking empirical studies, however, have shown that the racial attitudes of students from non-Black minority groups are dissimilar to those of White or African American students, and that the factors that influence students’ opinions vary by race/ethnicity as well.

Despite the ascendancy of recent research that examines the college experiences of racial/ethnic groups other than White and Black Americans, Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) still remain an understudied minority group in higher education. The views and experiences of Asian Pacific Americans are seldom studied in-depth and often discussed only in comparison to findings regarding other racial/ethnic groups (Yonezawa & Antonio, 1996; Osajima, 1991). This omission has prompted several Asian American scholars (e.g., Hune & Chan, 1997; Osajima, 1995) to advance that Asian Americans are the “invisible” population in American higher education. Therefore, in order to fill the relative void of research on Asian Americans in higher education and strengthen their visibility in the discourse on race, this study seeks to examine the racial attitudes of Asian Pacific American college students and the personal characteristics and facets of the college experience that influence their attitudes. From an analysis of a four-year longitudinal study of college students, this study will explore the intersection of three bodies of research—racial attitude, racial/ethnic identity, and college impact theory—and seeks to advance knowledge on Asian Americans in each of these three domains.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The influence of social and collegiate factors on Asian Pacific American (APA) students’ racial attitudes will not only be beneficial to higher education research and policy, but it will make a significant contribution to racial relations scholarship as well. Higher education institutions would be able to learn about APA students’ racial attitudes, as well as the aspects of campus environments that seem to have an impact on shaping their attitudes. Institutions can use this knowledge to create useful and appropriate curricular and co-curricular programming designed to address their diversity goals and missions. The larger society would be better able to understand this somewhat “invisible” portion of the population and the special contributions that a college education and environment have on students’ values and beliefs.

Demographic forecasters predict that in the 21st century, one-third of the American workforce will be composed of racial/ethnic minorities, and most jobs in the new century will require an education beyond a high school diploma (Justiz, 1994). In this increasingly multicultural workplace and society, the roles of colleges and universities will become even more pivotal in shaping the economic health of the American economy. Given the demographic and forecasts for the future, it becomes even more vital that the values, experiences, and influences of all racial/ethnic groups in the United States be better understood so that the issues that divide the races today will not adversely affect the economic necessities of tomorrow.

Yet, even in the present, higher education can ill afford to overlook its Asian Pacific American student population, since APA students represent a growing enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities and thus a growing significance in institutional diversity goals and practices. Although Asian Americans comprise less than 3 percent of the total U.S. population, Asian American college students represent 5.6 percent of higher education enrollment, and this figure continues to rise each year (Hune & Chan, 1997). From 1976 to 1996, the number of Asian Americans in higher education increased by over 400 percent to over 823,000 in 1996 (Escueta & O’Brien, 1995; Academe Today, Chronicle of Higher Education, 1998). In addition, APA students currently represent a sizable portion of several college campuses: for example, they comprise 51 percent of the undergraduate population at UC Irvine, 35 percent at UC Berkeley, 29 percent at MIT, and 27 percent at the University of Chicago (Academe Today, Chronicle of Higher Education, 1998). Moreover, Asian Pacific Americans are now the country’s fastest growing racial/ethnic group, and, when this fact is coupled with Current Population Survey data revealing that APAs are more likely than any other racial/ethnic group to have attended at least 4 years of college by the age of 25 (Escueta & O’Brien, 1995), one can fairly assume that high APA college enrollment trends will continue in the 21^st century.

Asian Americans are not the only minority group that has increased in representation on U.S. college campuses. Since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, several higher education institutions have sought to increase access to higher education for previously under-represented minority groups, which in turn, has produced greater African American, Hispanic, and Native American enrollments. However, the growth of minority enrollments in predominantly White institutions is also meant to serve as a value-explicit educational component: the existence of a multi-racial student body serves as a foundation for cross-racial interactions and experiences that foster racial tolerance and acceptance. The notion that increased inter-racial contact will lessen racial animosity dates back almost a half-century to Gordon Allport’s 1954 classic, The Nature of Prejudice. In this influential work, Allport linked racial prejudice to the negative stereotypes individuals use to characterize people from other racial/ethnic groups. Allport reasoned that these negative stereotypes—formed by an ignorance of people of other races and ethnicities—could be invalidated and instead reconstructed in a positive light if individuals of different races could interact and learn about each other.

Yet, previous research has proven that mere increases in the likelihood of cross-racial interaction will not necessarily lead to improved racial relations (e.g., Stephan & Brigham, 1985). Indeed, Allport himself warned that in order for inter-racial contact to work in dispelling the negative stereotypes that drive racial prejudice, the contact must be made under certain conditions. Some of these conditions include but are not limited to: the willingness of all participants to engage in inter-racial contact, the assurance that the opinions of all the participants must be considered of equal merit, and the provision that the participants share similar values and beliefs. Thus, in order for higher education institutions to be successful in fostering a heightened racial awareness and acceptance of diversity in their students, they must address, understand, and value the basis for all their students’ views. Colleges cannot be effective in institutional planning, policy, and programming with regard to diversity until the perspectives of a diverse set of constituencies are examined, understood, and not assumed. Since Asian Pacific Americans are becoming an increasingly larger portion of enrollment in higher education, their views are pivotal in this process. This study will not only articulate Asian Pacific American students’ opinions on racial/ethnic diversity issues, but will also help higher education institutions provide a suitable environment in which APA students may maintain or possibly develop positive attitudes toward diversity.

THE HIGHER EDUCATION CONTEXT

Granted, a study on Asian Americans’ racial attitudes and/or racial/ethnic identity could be executed irrespective of a college setting. However, there are several reasons why the college years are an ideal time to study racial attitudes. The topic of race in higher education continues to be one of the most contentious and omnipresent issues on many college campuses today. This may be due in no small part to the fact that many colleges and universities have become explicitly committed to fostering students’ tolerance for or acceptance of racial/ethnic diversity, as evident in their mission, goal, and philosophy statements (Hurtado & Dey, 1997; Milem, 1992). Indeed, higher education has long considered itself to have an influence on a wide range of students’ beliefs and values (Jacob, 1957; Hyman, Wright & Reed, 1975), including racial issues. Pascarella & Terenzini (1991) concur: “There is little doubt that American colleges and universities are and have been deeply concerned with shaping the attitudes, values, and beliefs of their students” (p. 269).

Yet, there is neither a consensus of opinion that higher education should be influencing its students’ social values through multicultural or diversity initiatives, nor an unequivocal belief that a college education actually does shape students’ values. Outspoken critics in the late 1980s and early 1990s contended that American liberal education was declining in quality due to “politically correct” changes in the curriculum that had little to do with higher learning and more with politicized racial agendas and the inculcation of leftist racial values (e.g., D’Souza, 1991; Kimball, 1990; Bloom, 1987). Yet, findings from a study sponsored by the Ford Foundation’s Campus Diversity Initiative concluded that contemporary Americans find diversity education on college and university campuses to be beneficial. The study found that two in three Americans thought it important that colleges and universities “prepare people to function in a diverse society.” In addition, 71 percent felt that diversity education on college and university campuses helped to bring society together, and 69 percent thought that courses and campus activities that emphasized diversity and diverse perspectives had more of a positive than negative effect on the education of students (Association of American Colleges & Universities, 1998).

According to some researchers, however, the debate over the function of diversity in higher education is moot since the college environment has little impact on students’ attitudes and values. Several studies maintain that decreases in students’ ethnocentrism and prejudice during and after college were due more to a successful socialization or sophistication process (i.e., “political correctness”) than an actual change in personality (Jacob, 1957; Feldman & Newcomb, 1973). Similarly, in an often cited study, Jackman (1978) argued that a college education does not make individuals more likely to support racial integration, but instead “teaches” students to publicly support abstract democratic principles in order to appear enlightened.

However, the bulk of research studying the impact of college on students’ racial attitudes has concluded that facets of the college environment do indeed have an effect on students’ views on race and that, in some cases, the effect can be long-term (see, for example, Astin, 1993; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Hyman, Wright, & Reed, 1975). Findings from recent studies have concluded that all of the following components of the college environment can exert an impact on students’ racial attitudes: a) structural properties, such as percentages of minority enrollments (Allen, 1986), institutional selectivity, size, and student services expenditures (Hurtado, 1992); b) perceptions of the campus climate (Nora & Cabrera, 1996; Pascarella, Edison, Nora, Hagedorn, & Terenzini, 1996; Hurtado, 1992); c) curricular influences (Milem, 1992; Molla & Westbrook, 1990); d) racial/cultural workshops (Pascarella et al., 1996; Springer, Palmer, Terenzini, Pascarella & Nora, 1996; Neville & Furlong, 1994); e) faculty contact outside the classroom (Milem, 1992; Astin, 1993); and f) co-curricular factors, such as residence halls (Blimling, 1993) and extra-curricular activities (Pascarella et al., 1996; Glisan, 1992; Muir, 1991).

In addition to the fact that numerous studies have shown that the college experience can help shape students’ racial attitudes, there are other reasons why the college context provides an excellent backdrop in the study of influences on individuals’ racial attitudes. For example, developmental theorists and psychologists consider the periods of late-adolescence to early adulthood as pivotal in the shaping of individuals’ personal identities and worldviews (Erikson, 1963; Chickering & Reisser, 1993; Alwin, Cohen, & Newcomb, 1991). Erik Erikson (1963), in his “epigenetic principle,” describes eight stages of psychosocial development in which individuals are presented with a “crisis” that needs to be resolved. Successful resolution of the crisis enables the individual to move forward and face new challenges. The crisis generally associated with traditionally-aged college students is stage five, or “identity versus identity confusion.” In this phase, students struggle to find their own identities, and as they break free from the once strong pressure to conform, they begin to experiment. In this moment of their lives, they become much more open to change and different perspectives, perhaps more so than in any other period in their lives. Chickering & Reisser (1993) take Erikson’s stage five one step further by dividing the strive toward identity consciousness into seven different tasks or vectors. As students move through the vectors, they become more aware of their own identity—including but not limited to their racial identity—and in turn more understanding of how their identity relates to other people’s identities and cultures.

Although the focus of their study was on political and not racial attitudes, Alwin, Cohen, & Newcomb (1991), in their generational/persistence model, similarly argued that late adolescents and young adults go through a period of “vulnerability” in which their attitudes and orientations are subject to change, but that later in life these attitudes become more stable. As summarized in Alwin et al., Theodore Newcomb demonstrated this point when he studied the political orientations and social attitudes of a group of women who attended Bennington College in the 1930s and 1940s. His instrumental work demonstrated the significance of the college environment and the importance of the peer reference group in shaping young adult women’s political attitudes. What was even more fascinating was that Newcomb followed-up with these women decades later, and learned that those women who had stayed in supportive social environments maintained the political orientations that they acquired during college into their 50s, 60s, and even 70s. Thus, he proved that, as young adults, these women’s political attitudes were more malleable, but as time progressed over their life span, their attitudes became more stable.

So, the conditions of this research in the college context are ideal in both the individual and environmental sense; during the years they are in college, students are perhaps more open to influences on their values than any other period in their lives, and at the same time, colleges are making an intentional effort to shape students’ racial attitudes toward the embracement of diversity.

LIMITATIONS IN THE RESEARCH ON ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICANS AND RACE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Knowing that an individual’s views toward racial issues and a higher education share an interplay with each other and that Asian Pacific Americans are becoming an increasing presence on college campuses across the country, it would seem logical that research on APA students’ racial attitudes in college would be on the rise. Why, then, are Asian Americans and their higher educational experiences understudied? Critics argue that the gap in the literature and lack of interest by scholars may be due to lingering generalizations about Asians in American society. Both Lei (1998) and Hune & Chan (1997) posit that Asian Americans are overlooked in educational literature because of one or another seemingly contradictory stereotypes: the “forever foreigner” and the “model minority” conventions. In the “forever foreigner” depiction, APAs are perceived as foreigners or eternal immigrants unassimilated to American values who have no stake in American social concerns and therefore are not relevant in discussions concerning racial matters. As the “model minority,” APAs are considered to be high-achieving educational success stories who require no special attention from educators. Indeed, since the 1980s, much of the attention given to Asian Americans in education has emphasized their academic achievements and referred to Asian American students as “whiz kids,” the “head of the class,” or child prodigies (see, for example, Graubard, 1988; Brand, 1987; Butterfield, 1986). In either stereotypical scenario, Asian Pacific Americans are regarded as marginal members of the major dialogue on diversity in higher education.

In addition to the perceptual reasons why APAs remain largely unstudied, there are also significant theoretical and methodological difficulties with regard to the examination of Asian Pacific Americans. First, in the case of racial attitude theory, the field has been dominated by a Black/White paradigm. More specifically, theoretical study has primarily focused on White Americans’ attitudes toward Blacks. The precedent for this tendency was established by Gunnar Myrdal in 1944, when the author, in the classic, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, placed the responsibility for solving the “Negro dilemma”—and thereby the elimination of prejudice—on White Americans. Subsequent researchers adhered to Myrdal’s prognostication and, in their strong commitment to reducing racial prejudice, examined the racial attitudes of White Americans to the exclusion of other racial/ethnic groups. One prominent social scientist admitted that: “It never occurred to us when we wrote questions in the Forties and Fifties to ask them of Blacks because Myrdal’s dilemma was a White dilemma and it was White attitudes that demanded study” (Paul Sheatsley, personal communication, in Schuman, Steeh, & Bobo, 1985, p. 139). Yet, this empirical leaning continues to obscure research on the racial attitudes of minority groups in that it fails not only to examine how African Americans may perceive White Americans, but it also completely excludes an inquiry into the opinions of and among other racial/ethnic groups in the United States, including Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asian Pacific Americans.

In addition to the lack of attention in racial attitude theory, Asian Pacific Americans seem to be understudied in terms of theory on racial or ethnic identification as well (Serafica, 1992; Chen, 1989). For Asian Americans, racial or ethnic identity theory can take on several different forms. One form pertains to acculturation theories, or the level of adoption of Western values and behaviors or retainment of Asian values and behaviors. While acculturation theorists contend that Asian Americans from different ethnic backgrounds follow similar patterns of acculturation processes from a more “Asian” orientation to a more “Western” one, they do acknowledge that different ethnicities may exhibit distinctive ethnic traits and levels of acculturation (Sue & Sue, 1990). Racial identity development models represent another form of identity theory that have been used to describe Asian American identity. Several psychologists (Atkinson, Morten, & Sue, 1989; Gay, 1985; Phinney, 1990) propose that individuals from minority groups—including Asian Americans—progress through a series of conflicts and resolutions in their lives that help them make evaluations and judgments about their racial identity and how this identity relates to those around them.

Racial and ethnic identification pose interesting potential implications in the study of Asian Americans’ racial attitudes. Recent scholarship has drawn parallels between peoples’ feelings about their own racial/ethnic identity and feelings about other individuals and groups. Several researchers (Cross, 1990; Glisan, 1992; Carter, 1990) have found that the nature of one’s identification with one’s own racial/ethnic group may lead to negative attitudes toward other racial/ethnic groups. For examples, Cross (1990) identifies several types of identities in African American adolescents, including those in which a high salience attachment to a Black identity may lead African American youth to develop pro-Black and anti-White attitudes. Conv...