Making Sense of Segregation: Asian American Youth Perspectives

This qualitative study examines how 64 Asian American high school students and recent alumni in New York City make sense of racial and socioeconomic segregation across selective and nonselective public high schools; and what their sensemaking reveals about their understandings of race, class, and power. Nearly all interviewees believed that the underrepresentation of Black and Latine students at selective high schools is problematic, but they employed distinct frames to describe the nature of the problem and how to remedy it. Most students employed abstract liberalism and culture of poverty frames, lacking a critical analysis of race and power. Some students employed a conscious compromise frame, critiquing segregation as undermining the individual benefits of diversity. Fewer students employed a power analysis frame, pointing to the systemic factors shaping the racialized structure of educational opportunity. Findings reveal students’ uneven experience with, and analytic tools for, discussing race and Asian American identity.