I want to try writing some analysis of our Audio for Inclusion audio narratives to prepare for a journal paper. The two lenses by which I will be commenting are: 1) the figured worlds (or cultural worlds / social worlds) that students experience (and that faculty may not see or misunderstand) and 2) the critique and critical narrativization students employ when telling these stories (that provide feedback or reframing useful for faculty).
First, Amber details complex identity contestations in response to our prompts for her to define her identity intersections. She notes a gap between how people tend to see Amber and how she sees herself. She is “on the browner end of the spectrum” compared to most East Asians, and she worries others will see her as “whitewashed” because she was adopted by a white family. She acknowledges that in engineering her identity in likely racialized as simply Asian (this is how she phenotypically looks although her phenotype as darker complexioned creates some more complexity). In order to process her identity as Asian in engineering she must also contend with her identities in terms of other figured worlds, for example, the meaning of transracial adoptees. She finds she does not fit ethnically with the group she phenotypically appears to be. Broadly, the figured worlds of Amber’s racialization are much further beyond what would be on the radar of a typical engineering faculty member.
Amber’s identity is put on the spot in a recounted scene from a high school class. A narrative / stereotype of Asian people harmed by affirmative action is played into, Amber’s racialization is also cast as something having to do with the advantages or disadvantages of Asian people relative to white people. This is tokenized othering / hypervisibility, and Amber’s racial ambiguity prompts this tokenized othering. Although each person’s identity could be cast in terms of affirmative action (how lucky / unlucky a person is to be the race they are), the unmarked (white) majority of her class are (likely) not. Further, Amber questions the truth of the affirmative action narrative (“is that even true?”). This marks a critical response to her experiences in normative culture.
[2:54] As Amber entered college, she began to think more deeply about her identity. We could say she was intentionally looking for the community to support her identity in the figured world of her racialization as Asian. Yet she did not find a group for transracial adoptees, joined the Chinese student association instead. We recall her feeling out of place with ethnically Chinese people so this is likely not the easiest group to compromise and find community in. Various other circumstances complicate this search for community– her name appears white and feels like it could be a deception to her, perhaps in the same way she feared and resisted deception regarding college admissions. While these circumstances do not directly integrate in the engineering classroom, we could consider them a part of the cognitive load increasing Amber’s worries about socialization and racialization within engineering classrooms.
Within engineering classrooms, her phenotypical appearance prompts a “guessing game” where people wonder out loud about her ethnic background. While she is clear on her answer (“I know that I’m Chinese, I was born there”), she finds her peers second guessing her identity “weird” and notes it happens a lot. Within this story of the guessing game, we sense both Amber’s confusion with how to narrate her identity more legibly for her peers and her identification within that figured world as a racialized other. This ostracization of a racialized other is a specific phenomenon of the figured world of a predominantly white and unmarked white space, which engineering education, STEM education, and much of higher education is. We also notice Amber’s modest critique of the guessing game, pushing back on this common practice as weird and annoying.
Amber further notes the connotations of the stereotypes of her identity. She clearly experiences the difference between being racialized primarily as a woman (“people see me and assume I don’t know anything because I’m a woman”) and being racialized as Asian (“super perfect in all my studies”). Again, Amber seems keenly aware of the figured worlds of race and gender in the engineering classroom, and she pushes back on them through naming them critically. Next, Amber recalls a recasting of the figured world of gender in engineering as some peers mentioned she only got her good grades because a particular professor “favors female students over male students” and that she is “not actually that smart.” Here Amber’s critique reaches an affective limit and she exclaims, “Stupid!,” as there is no reason to think she was “shmoozing her way up the class.” Amber also notes how the offhanded comment is probably not even remembered by this male peer classmate, but sticks with her. In this way the intersubjective figured world of gender in the engineering classroom may be co-constructed by men and women but with unequal power to create and stereotype (i.e., men are stereotyping women) and unequal consequences (i.e., women remember comments much longer than men likely do. These gendered microaggressions that happen in peer-to-peer interactions are largely out of the view of engineering faculty.
Although often seen as more complimentary and not as offensive, the figured world that creates the “preconceived notion that Asians are inherently a bit smarter” is also causing Amber angst. When Amber is asked for help with homework and people get upset with her because “[she’s] Asian” and should be smart enough to do the homework. She points out she “also make[s] mistakes” and “no one can be perfect.” She asks “Why would you go to me because I’m Asian? Do you equate Asian with being smart?” The sense of critique is clear through this retelling. One sense she is critiquing in ways she is not necessarily given the agency to critique in her everyday life. The critique is specifically with the equating of Asian people with being smart, something which is often seen (by white people) as complimentary and unproblematic compared with deficit stereotypes (e.g., with women or Black people). But in actuality, the stereotype is still harmful and limiting. Racial stereotypes tokenize, other, and imply a set of assumptions that create negative outcomes, even if the outcome is simply to live up to a positive stereotype’s expectation.
Amber notes other aspects of this focus on the racial stereotype. She notes she has anxiety focused on improving herself, and asks “do i work hard to be smart and fit in better with a preconceived notion of what it means to be Asian?” This demonstrates some of the warped consequences of racism (even “positive” associated racism). That is, Amber wants to improve, has anxiety about improving, but in addition she wonders whether these areas of self-improvement only reinforce and play into the racial stereotypes.
Amber notes how “being different” within most spaces (most figured worlds) affects her overall. She notes people don’t know how to act around her, and she thinks she “would like school more, fit in more, if it was more diverse. If there were more people that look like me.” That is, she notes how the interplay between her own identity and the cultural normativities surrounding her make her more on display. Specifically she wishes she “wasn’t such an outlier and a spectacle.” She notes that there’s “nothing easy about being different” and “as an outsider you don’t have people who can talk to about it.” Within the broad sense of this figured world, she needs some more connections with process her own experiences with someone who would understand, but broadly, as an outsider, she will not have that. She notes, it’s almost as if she doesn’t “feel relevant.” While she has described many instances of being on display and hypervisible, she is also noting the invisibility that comes with not having a community to understand your experience, validate your feelings, and reflect back your identity through relationship. Finally, Amber’s reflection that these differences have made her feel “belittled, underestimated, like an outsider and…weirdly ridiculed” summarizes this experience of isolation in the figured world. In a moment of powerful and deep critique of this cultural identity, she notes that it may have “done stuff to improve my character, but at what cost.”
[10:56] Amber notes she does not particularly go to professors for support about these issues. This, in general, is a mechanism for why many of the figured worlds described in this interview remain out of view. She acknowledges aspects of this that are self imposed– that she has “anxiety about authority figures” and worries about “doing the wrong thing” and wishes to always be viewed favorably by authority figures. So, opening up to authority figures like professors is stressful, knowing that “some professors…make you feel bad and dumb for asking questions.” This is an aspect of empathic communication that we anticipated in our project– that it was professors who came across more empathetic and understanding who would gain more access to understanding the relevant views and the figured worlds of their students. If a professor asks, “how would you not know that,” Amber closes off communication, possibly to more professors than just the professor in question.
Amber further notes the feeling of isolation from the professors– that they are “Old. White. American. Guys.” and that this means ultimately a lot of what she would go for support they would simply not understand. Finally, Amber notes another fact we have perceived to be indicative of many engineering classrooms that “in engineering class, you don’t get a sense of who professor is beyond classroom” that it is a “professional relationship…get business done…nothing else.” Thus, in a figured world that is relatively de-personalized, students often do not come away with a sense of which professors they can trust and open to, leaving more of their challenging experiences out of a faculty member’s view.
Finally, Amber suggests that professors could keep in mind the formative nature of college that may be increasing the mental work, such as her many identity-laden experiences. While Amber herself is still unlikely to go to professors with this information, through this narrative she has shared the critical feedback she has not voiced in real life.