Teaching and learning with Asian American and Pacific Islander students

The White/Other binary serve as normative racialized discourses in US society and educational research and practice. In this article, I discuss the implications of this binary on teaching Asian American and Pacific Islander students by first examining the positioning and representations of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the US racial order. I then argue that all teachers need to critically reflect on their own positionality within the system of Whiteness and how their cultural lenses affect their pedagogy. In the final section, I present anti‐oppressive pedagogical approaches for teaching and learning with Asian American and Pacific Islander students and discuss how they can challenge the hegemonic racialization and inequities within the US education system. Notes 1. For example, bell hooks (Citation1989) argues that the term ‘White supremacy’ is more useful than ‘racism’ to express the exploitation of people of color in US society because, ‘The term “white supremacy” enables us to recognize not only that [people of color] are socialized to embody the values and the attitudes of white supremacy, but that we can exercise “white‐supremacist control” over other [people of color]’ (p. 113). Populations of color exert stereotypic representations and racism upon each other, and we exert self‐nihilism upon ourselves (West, Citation1994). These representations, racisms, and nihilisms, however, were/are learned within the racial order of White supremacy and based on a very specific racism (i.e. White racism), which maintains the power and status of Whites. 2. According to Kumashiro, the term ‘anti‐oppressive education’ is a very broad one that encompasses approaches to education that actively challenge different forms of oppression. ‘Oppression’ refers to a social dynamic in which certain ways of being in this world—including certain ways of identifying or being identified—are normalized or privileged while other ways are disadvantaged or marginalized. Forms of oppression include racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, anti‐Semitism, ableism, colonialism, and other ‘isms’. Anti‐oppressive education aims to challenge multiple forms of oppression (http://www.antioppressiveeducation.org/definition.html). 3. The authors found that the students defined ‘being Chinese’ in different ways, depending on their place of origin (Taiwan or mainland China), family background, and dialect. For example, ‘in the case of some of the Taiwanese students, elements of nationalism can be seen in their parents’ support of or involvement in the Taiwan independence movement, which aims to establish Taiwan as a sovereign nation … in dissociation from either the mainland‐origin Nationalists in Taiwan or the Communists on the mainland. … In fact, “in the case of Taiwanese natives, the term ‘Chinese’ itself can be contested or even rejected”’ (McKay & Wong, Citation1996, p. 588).