2025 Collaborative Network for Engineering & Computing Diversity (CoNECD)

This theory paper aims to propose a model to depict racialized Asian and Asian American engineering students. Asian American and Immigrant students are overrepresented and considered high achievers in engineering and computing education, which leads to wrongful aggregation with White students to form the “majority group.” However, aggregation perpetuates the harmful minority model stereotype which marginalizes Asian (American) students by coercing them into the prescribed standard of high achievement. This results in the erasure of the Asian (American) experience in engineering and computing education and fuels internalized Anti-Asian racism. In this presentation, we contend that it is unjust to only rely on traditional, meritocratic metrics of success (e.g., academic achievement) to describe Asian American and Immigrant experiences. Meritocratic culture masks their minoritized experiences, such as poor mental health and microaggressions. We aim to articulate and highlight the systemic racism Asian Americans and Immigrants typically encounter to push back on common research practices that negatively and implicitly reinforce model minority stereotypes. Drawing on Asian American and Immigrant literature, we present a theoretical framework that illustrates three roots of anti-Asian racism: systemic, interracial, and intra-racial. Systematic racism is rooted in hyper-selectivity, where contemporary socio-politics adopt an immigration system that prioritizes accepting Asian newcomers with desired skills and socio-economic status relative to both their domestic counterparts and the general population in the United States. Interracial racism is rooted in the model minority which stereotypes Asian Americans and Immigrants as minorities who overcame systemic barriers and limitations through meritocracy to achieve enormous economic and academic success. Finally, intra-racial racism is rooted in internalized racism where traditional Asian cultures influence Asian Americans and immigrants to follow the rules, get good grades, and major in prestigious disciplines with a narrowly defined frame of success. These three roots feed anti-Asian racism and affect the Asian American and Immigrant student experience, which differentiates from the experience of White students. We advocate for abandoning the ideology and treatment of equating Asian and White students which leads to grouping them together in quantitative research. We strongly believe in including and acknowledging the racialized experiences of Asian American and Immigrant students for genuine DEI initiatives toward dismantling white supremacy and the wedge it puts between minoritized racial groups.