1st Edition

Asian American Racialization and the Politics of U.S. Education

By Wayne Au Copyright 2025
    232 Pages
    by Routledge

    232 Pages
    by Routledge

    Asian American Racialization and the Politics of U.S. Education explores issues surrounding Asian American education in the United States, and how they relate to educational theory, policy, and practice.

    The book challenges stereotypes and assumptions that pervade U.S. education, restores absent histories of Asian American people in this context, and provides concrete examples of educational actions and policies that enable anti-racist educational work to go on. It argues that understanding Asian American racialization in the U.S. is essential to fighting white supremacy in schools and communities.

    Utilizing frameworks from Asian American Studies and Cultural Studies, this book will be important reading for those interested in doing anti-racist, liberatory, and abolitionist educational work. In particular, it will be relevant for those working or researching in the fields of Asian American Education, Multicultural Education, Social Justice Education, and Critical Education.

    Chapter 1. Why Asian American Racialization Now?  Chapter 2. Learning Asian America  Chapter 3. Asian American Education Under Threat  4. The Rise of the Asian American Model Minority  Chapter 5. Neoliberal Model Minority Meritocracy  Chapter 6. Hard Working, Techno-Oriental Machines  Chapter 7. Beyond Perils, Models, and Borders  Chapter 8. Educating for Critical Asian American Pasts, Presents, and Futures

    Biography

    Wayne Au is Professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell, USA. A long-time educational activist and scholar, his work critically examines issues of power and justice in educational policy and practice.

    “Wayne Au looks beyond the boundaries of the US to offer a critical and expansive account of the ‘complex and contradictory’ racialization of Asian Americans and the role of education in this. The book is also a crucial call for greater understanding of ourselves and each other in the name of racial justice. This is an important and beautiful book.”

    Stacey J. Lee, Vilas Research Professor & Frederick Erickson WARF Professor of Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

    “To narrate the story of race, racism, and anti-racism in the United States without meaningfully integrating the experiences and advocacies of Asian Americans is to tell an incomplete and inaccurate story. Wayne Au offers a necessary corrective and intervention that marshals subjugated knowledges in pursuit of community, solidarity, and ultimately freedom. His book is a must-read to understand not only the complex histories and legacies of oppression and dehumanization, but also the strategic possibilities to wield education for justice and liberation.”  

    Roland Sintos Coloma, Professor, Teacher Education, Wayne State University