Disclaimer: Please note that the views expressed below represent the opinions of the article’s author. The following work does not necessarily represent the views of the Synergy: Journal of Contemporary Asian Studies.

Abstract

For ethnic minorities who strive to navigate the dominant culture, there is forever a tension between assimilation and coping with prejudice, hostility, or even exploitation of “difference.” This two-year-long ethnography seeks to understand the experience and cultural identification of Chinese international students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (hereafter UW-Madison) as they progress through their undergraduate life, specifically by examining forces that both pull them towards assimilation into White American culture and factors pushing them back into isolation. This research explores linguistic techniques, such as switching between English and Chinese, that are actively used by Chinese students to form cues of cultural identification and perform boundary works. Facing tensions with White American students, Chinese students often find themselves unsure about whether their racial and ethnic identity, as opposed to more contingent reasons unrelated to their ethnic identity, is the cause of their exclusion. Therefore, Chinese students are constantly caught between blaming themselves and speaking out about their discomfort. As suggested by this ethnography, among the dominant group, unreflective prejudicial dispositions often exist regardless of conscious beliefs. Racism is prevalently entrenched in the dominant culture and in the most mundane daily rituals. Therefore, countering race-based bias requires intentional re-education and constant efforts by educational institutions to raise cultural awareness among all students.

Keywords: Chinese international students; American University; cultural navigation; race and ethnicities

Introduction and Methods

Originally from Changsha city in Hunan province, I came to the United States from China at the age of 17 to attend the University of Wisconsin in September 2014. On the second day of my arrival in Madison, I attended the freshman orientation for international students. Inside the check-in building, I was surprised by the high percentage of Chinese students and the relatively fewer Korean, Indian and European students.[1] I heard Chinese, a language familiar to me, spoken in voices of excitement everywhere in the building.

Perhaps I should not have been surprised by this scene, I thought to myself as I later searched up relevant statistics online. From 2015-2016, among the international students that attended American colleges, more than a third were Chinese, totalling approximately 328,000 individuals.[2] Not only is this percentage of international students on the rise, the rate of said increase is also climbing. In fact, the year 2014-2015 witnessed the highest rate of growth since 1978.[3] Over the last decade, between 2007 to 2017, the number of domestic students and Wisconsin residents at UW-Madison did not increase, but the number of undergraduate international students almost doubled from 1,643 to 3,091.[4] In the year 2017-2018, UW-Madison hosted roughly 30,000 undergraduate students. While 8% were international students, Chinese students constituted 52% of all undergraduate international students, totalling 1,661 people.

In the afternoon of orientation day, all international students were summoned to a large room for ice-breaking activities. At my table of roughly 15 students, the facilitated asked each student to introduce themselves to the group, including where they were from. We heard “China,” “China,” over and over again. Some pronounced “China” resonantly, others nonchalantly, still others sheepishly. Chinese students seemed to be embarrassed by how much their demographic dominated the population of international students. Some Chinese students seemed assured by the fact that they would not be alone in this foreign land. Others looked apprehensive, possibly worried that they would not be perceived as unique enough by both fellow students from China and by their American counterparts. Some students even showed glimpses of disappointment, perhaps expecting to see a different culture at this institution thousands of miles away from home. Yet, compatriots were everywhere.

A Chinese female student sitting next to me, knowing that I was also Chinese, did not initiate a conversation with me. Instead, she talked past me to a Korean student, passionately asking how her day had been. At some point during their conversation, the Chinese female student asked the Korean student, “what time is it now?” I quickly glanced at my watch and told her the time, while the Korean student was still searching for her phone in her handbag. However, the Chinese student ignored me as if I was non-existent, and continued to wait for the Korean student’s response. Sitting close to them, I listened attentively to their conversation and looked for opportunities to jump in. However, the two of them never made eye contact with me or invite me to their discussion. At some point, the Korean student jokingly commented, “there are so many Chinese here. Maybe three thousand.” The Chinese student rolled her eyes and chimed in: “yeah there are so many of us.”

Although I was suffering from a strange sense of discomfort and exclusion, which I struggled to fully articulate in the moment, many other Chinese students at the Orientation seemed glad to find companions with the same cultural origin, people understood their feelings and would thus be able to navigate this new place with them and offer support when needed. Despite seeing one another for the first time, many already seemed ready to form strong, long-term bonds, sharing contact information and scheduling times to go shopping and hang out in the future. In my sophomore and junior years, I could still see the same Chinese students who met during Orientation hanging out together.

There is a paradox here. On the one hand, Chinese students need to bond with one another to cope with potential challenges in a foreign land. On the other hand, they may also wish to step out of the “Chinese circle” and make the most of their experience abroad, fulfilling their intentions to come to the US in the first place. Under this logic, exclusively hanging out with other Chinese students could be viewed as a failure to meet the objectives of studying abroad. This paradoxical mentality, alongside the prejudice and racism Chinese international students may face, has influenced the cultural identification lived and experienced by Chinese students abroad. They face the challenge of navigating complex questions such as: how do I approach a new and different college life in the US? Who should I hang out with? How will I cope with racism and discrimination? To what extent will I continue to identify with Chinese culture at the end of college?

Starting in December 2015, I began taking field notes about my own experience and that of other Chinese students attending UW-Madison. Most data in this analysis is drawn from field notes of daily observations of Chinese students around me. The main observation location was a Co-Op where I lived for two years. The Co-Op housed a diverse group of students, including Chinese students, other international students, and American students of different races and ethnicities, who extensively interacted with each other every day in the shared space. I also observed classroom interactions between Chinese students, American students and their professors. After two years of study, I finished my fieldwork in the summer of 2017. In addition to taking field notes, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 students, among whom eight were Chinese international students and two were White Americans.

Past research on Chinese international students has mainly focused on their motivations for studying abroad, the various linguistic and academic challenges they faced while studying in the US, and their experiences of alienation and apparent “unassimilability.”[5] [6] [7] The existing literature has the following limitations. First, past studies have drawn heavily from quantitative data, rather than conducting in-depth interviews with individual Chinese students to understand their personal reasoning and feelings as they progressed through undergraduate studies. Second, those who studied Chinese students as an outsider and through a Westernized lens were often tainted with ungrounded assumptions and overgeneralizations. Third, past studies have generally been conducted by faculty members or scholars who, despite their theoretical grounding, were not embedded in the lived experiences of being a student.

Being a Chinese student myself, I derive my findings and arguments from close observations of the most mundane daily routines of Chinese students around me, as well as my personal experiences as an undergraduate student. Because Chinese students saw me as a part of the in-group, they confided honest attitudes about racial relationships to me, and did not regard my presence as disturbing their course of interactions despite existing awareness about my research intentions.

My field notes also covered Chinese students with a wide variety of experiences and personalities. My subjects included those who assumed leadership positions in large student organizations that were historically dominated by White students, those who were extremely vocal and outspoken in classrooms, and those who preferred speaking English rather than Chinese to demonstrate their identification with American culture. This variety in my study participants directly challenges the stereotypical, and perhaps even monolithic, depiction of Chinese students in American media. This is not to say that the isolation and challenges facing many Chinese international students are not real. Having studied at UW-Madison for more than three years, I am constantly awestruck by how little the conversations surrounding race, identity, and prejudice include discussions about international students, especially given their increasing quantity and impact on campus dynamics. My work thus strives to address problems that undermine the college experience of Chinese students, and present a comprehensive and complex picture of this demographic group.

In this excerpt from my ethnography, I outline the various factors that play into the cultural identification of Chinese international students throughout the course of their undergraduate years at UW-Madison. By specifically examining the relationships between and mutual perceptions of Chinese and White American students, I explain the forces that pull Chinese students towards assimilation into White American culture and those that push them back into isolation and an enclosed Chinese social circle. As a background to my analysis, I lay out reasons why Chinese students come to the US to pursue higher education. This combination of factors often includes a cultural emphasis on education, colonial history, the capacity shortfall of Chinese universities, and the economic and social capital of students’ families. I then proceed to explain the reasons why Chinese students can fall on different parts of the spectrum, ranging from assimilation to isolation. Specifically, I develop two themes. The first theme of “fetishizing the west” relates to how Chinese students come to the US with a positive, if not idealized, view of the West. I seek to explore the potentially negative implications of this mentality, and its impact on compatriot relations with other Chinese students. The second theme of “exclusion as unconscious habitus” argues that white American students often subconsciously display certain mannerisms or comments in their interactions with Chinese students, accounting for one of the important reasons behind the social isolation of Chinese students. Finally, I discuss the complexities that can factor into the cultural identification of Chinese students, as well as other less visible sources of inter-ethnic tensions.

The Perspective They Come From: The Financial and Cultural Appeal of US Education for Chinese Students

During an interview with Lindsey, my Chinese friend and a sophomore studying chemical engineering at UW-Madison, I asked her why she came to study in the United States.[8] She told me, since as far back as elementary school, her parents have been determined to send her abroad somewhere. Although the destination of her overseas studies did not necessarily have to the US, given that the UK was also an option. When I expressed my surprise at how early her parents started to plan her educational trajectory, Lindsey said that it was common for people in her neighborhood to send their children abroad, to the point that it “sort of became a norm”.

I interviewed another Chinese student, Vivian, who said,

“When I was 13 or 14ish, my dad suddenly asked me one day, ‘do you wanna study in the US,’ because his friend’s daughter was in the US and his friend told him that ‘you should send your daughter to experience a different educational system and a different culture.’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ I decided to come here without understanding what I was going to face.”

Similar answers were given in nearly all my interviews with eight Chinese students. They learned about studying abroad through their families, neighbors, and friends, and came to think of this overseas experience as expected and normal because they were going to follow the same trajectory. More recently, parents have also begun to send their children abroad as early as possible, so that their children can be westernized earlier.

In Yang’s ethnography studying the motivation behind Chinese students’ willingness to study in the US, he also observed that “most families had long planned to send their children overseas to acquire the cultural and social capital that they determined could only be obtained through exposure to cultures, institutions, and individuals located outside of mainland China.”[9] What makes it possible for Chinese students to gain these advantages abroad, I argue, is the economic and social capital possessed by their parents.

More macro-level and cultural reasons also contribute to the flood of Chinese international students attending American colleges. Deeply influenced by Confucian traditions, Chinese society emphasizes obtaining a strong and rigorous education.[10] Historically, the imperial examination system, which lasted around two thousand years and employed standardized testing to select candidates for the state bureaucracy, made education widely seen as one of the few paths to success and advancement. Over the past two hundred years, as a victim of invasion by multiple Western countries, China also learned to associate Western education with the aristocracy and high social prestige. Simultaneously, as the Chinese middle class is expanding, competition for a spot at Chinese universities is becoming increasingly challenging. Nowadays, the shortage of spots at Chinese universities for qualified applicants makes secondary education and gaokao, the standardized college entrance examination, particularly tough for students.[11] Chinese society’s emphasis on education, its previous experience of imperialism, and the growing number of students attempting to enter Chinese universities have all contributed to the appeal of American universities in the eyes of Chinese high school students.

While Chinese students are seeking an American education, US universities also have an interest in admitting them. Chinese international students typically pay full tuition, which bolsters college revenues, offsets budget woes, and allows colleges to admit more US-based students with financial aid. The University of California system, which annually recruits a large number of Chinese students, has had state funding reduced by one billion dollars since 1999.[12] Although universities often claim that they value the diversity and enrichment of perspectives brought to campus by international students, most Chinese students around me are well aware that they have limited access to financial aid, scholarships, and job opportunities, especially in comparison to domestic students. Many Chinese international students are open to voicing their skepticism about universities’ official rhetoric of diversity, sometimes even describing themselves as objects of economic exploitation.[13]

After receiving an email from the Chancellor’s office about an upcoming increase in tuition, my Chinese friend Amy instantly replied,

“Good afternoon! Could you please show the statistics of the employment rates of international students in recent years, especially after you have increased the tuition? We are willing to pay for extra if we know the extra tuition we paid truly improved the quality of our education and our outcomes. The article ‘Understanding the Tuition Proposals’ did not provide convincing evidence. We out-of-state students are not here in UW Madison to fill the budget hole and to guarantee the in-state students’ low tuition. This is not right. There is a sentence in the article: ‘We expect these out-of-state applications to rise even more this year’, and according to the context of this sentence, there will be more out-of-state students because we could contribute more money to UW. But what could you do and improve for us? The career fairs in UW had not done a good job in preparing international students for the job market (I really suggest the school count how many recruiters open jobs for international students in the career fair). Without seeing any improvements in these aspects, our tuitions just kept rising. Is this still the UW I loved? This is an overt discrimination. I look forward to hearing back from you!”

During an online conversation with a White American graduate student, she told me:

“In one of my classes – Applied Policy Analysis in Higher Ed – we had a politician from the state legislature come speak to our class. I asked him what his colleagues at the Capitol thought of international students. He blatantly said that international students are seen as financial gains to make up for cuts to higher ed from the state government. It was pretty infuriating. I asked him, ‘what if there’s a decrease in international students in Wisconsin due to the political climate, cost, etc.?’ And he basically didn’t know. It sounds like they’re basically relying on international students to pay for out of state tuition and this gives them a way to lower their financial assistance to higher ed.”

Nonetheless, international students are still likely to flood in to the American education system.[14] For Chinese parents and students – who are often quick to condemn the Chinese educational system for failing to cultivate critical thinking, effacing individualism, and imposing great psychological stress – studying in Western countries is a way to ensure a high-quality education and maintain or attain social, cultural, and economic capital.[15] Most importantly, in a collectivistic society such as China where reputation in social comparisons (mianzi) is greatly valued, studying in the West is the optimal way to avoid “looking bad” by failing the domestic college-entrance exam, while also earning the social prestige traditionally associated with receiving a Western higher education.[16] Therefore, in the absence of any restrictive policy, the trend of Chinese students flooding into American campuses is likely to persist.

After Chinese students arrive at American universities and begin their four-year-long journey of navigating American culture and their own identities, one may ask: where do they fall on the spectrum between assimilation to isolation? First, let’s start with the first theme – “fetishizing the West”.

Fetishizing the West: “White Girls Are So Much More Beautiful”

On a global scale, the West is generally regarded as a symbol of wealth, technological development, freedom, mobility, and standard-setting aesthetics. Therefore, not only is a Western education held in high esteem, other aspects of Western culture are also viewed with high regard. In China, one typical way of pointing out a person’s attractiveness is to say: “you look like a foreigner,” with “foreigner” usually referring to a White person (although sometimes also meaning a Korean or Japanese aesthetic, also regarded as more beautiful or stylish than Chinese people). Another common compliment is to say “you look mixed” (of White and Asian ethnicity). Whenever someone speaks of another being “in America right now,” it immediately generates jealousy and yearning in social contexts.

During the past one to two hundred years, Western invasions of China have instilled and ingrained fear of subordination and assumption of inferiority in Chinese mentalities. As most Western countries continue to retain their high international status today, mass cultural influence from the West in the forms of entertainment, media, advertising, and standards of beauty have also been extremely successful in shaping contemporary Chinese culture.[17] Colorism – the belief that lighter skin tones are better, regardless of racial background —has long existed in Chinese society.[18] On a global scale, colorism has serious and practical effects on people’s access to resources such as income and social status.[19]

Idealized perceptions of the West and “whiteness” contribute to the desire of Chinese students to study abroad, rather than stay in China. One may also infer that some Chinese students, while studying in the US, want to be assimilated into American society, specifically its English-speaking culture and social groups with White Americans.

One day, while working at the ice-cream shop, a group of Chinese students came to say ‘hi’ to my co-worker, a Chinese female Senior. She chatted enthusiastically with them for a while. After her friends left, she immediately turned to me, rolling her eyes, “I do have White friends. They just never happen to pass by.”

There is debate as to whether this acknowledgment of the West’s advancement implies a healthy mindset of learning, or an internalized sense of inferiority that manifests itself as fetishism. In other words, the assumed superiority of the West may imply internalized and negative feelings toward cultural in-group members.

The first time I talked to Jenny (a Chinese student) in the Co-Op, she replied in English and never spoke Chinese. When I asked her whether she would like to go to an activity held by the Chinese Student Association on campus, she openly stated her lack of interest in such an activity as well as her dislike of Chinese people who only stick around with other Chinese. Most of the time, Jenny hangs out with her roommate, a White American, or studies inside the Co-Op with her study partner who is also a White student.

One afternoon while eating dinner, Jenny asked me what I planned to do that night. I told her I was going to attend a training session for debate, and that I was on a competitive team that represented UW-Madison in the Regionals debate on moral issues.

Jenny stared at me, mouth agape, before saying, “wow, it’s really impressive that you can debate with Americans.”

Another time, Jenny and I were talking about romance when she asked if anyone was romantically interested in me. I told her honestly that there was. After a few seconds, she asked, “he’s Chinese, right?”

“Umm…No… He’s not Chinese.” I stuttered, starting to feel anxious about her reaction.

“American??!!” Jenny gasped.

“Yeah…” I nodded unnaturally with an embarrassed smirk.

“Wow!” Jenny exclaimed. Then she paused for another few seconds—”but why would an American guy be interested in you? White girls are so much more beautiful!”

Here, I define the assumed superiority and subsequent value of Whiteness also as a type of fetishism. The use of the term “fetishism” originated from a religious context, originally to refer to the attachment of inherent, almost supernatural, value or power to an object.[20] In this ethnographic context, members of minority groups have a skewed understanding of inter-racial dynamics, assuming Whites and Westerners as higher on a hierarchy, confusing historical invasion, exploitation, and subordination as indicators of the inherent power or superiority.

This ‘bottom-up’ fetishism has detrimental effects on minorities, because it involves an overly positive stereotyping of the powerful outgroup, often accompanied by an internalized objectification towards the self and the in-group. Similar to fetishism directed from the dominant group towards a minority group, bottom-up fetishism also reinforces an unjust power structure and hierarchy by reaffirming the perceived superiority of the dominant group. In other words, this inherent power structure means that fetishizing is always more harmful to the vulnerable minorities.

As one’s strong will to be assimilated into the dominant group induces a desire to break ties with one’s cultural in-group, the chance to form strong alliances with in-group members is consequently reduced. Nonetheless, when an ethnicity or nationality is negatively perceived and stereotyped by mainstream society, the will to weaken one’s connection with said identity seems to be an easy way of avoiding these negative stereotypes. In the US, China as a country is often portrayed negatively, partly because inter-racial attitudes are often heavily influenced by political relations. For example, during World War II, when the US was fighting Japan, magazines and books taught the public to distinguish Japanese people from other “good Asians.” Since 1949, Chinese people have been portrayed as communists who live ignorantly under dictatorship, and more recently, as immigrants who take away local resources and jobs.[21] [22]

In daily interactions, many Chinese students are well aware of how they are perceived differently by Americans, even in comparison to other Asian communities.

“Americans also perceive Chinese people as different from other Asians,” Kexin said, in response to Sherry’s comments about the ethnicity of the victim in the United Airlines discrimination case.

“No. To Americans, Asians are all the same.” Sherry disagreed.

“Americans do not treat Chinese and Japanese the same,” Kexin claimed, emphasizing each word.

“Chinese is going through rapid economic development. Really, what’s the difference between China and Japan?” Sherry asked, growing a bit impatient.

“No, there’s a huge difference, and Americans perceive other Asians—Japanese, Koreans, in a much better light than they perceive us…” Kexin refuted again.

“Shameless.” Sherry finally agreed and blurted out, “can’t they see how much money the American government owes us?”

“It’s disgusting how the American media frames news sometimes,” Kexin continued. “For example, when France was attacked by some terrorists, media really made a big deal out of it and people changed their Facebook profile pictures to French flags… You all saw that, right? Similar attacks happened in Russia and nobody talked about it. When Kunming train station [in China] was attacked by terrorists and people died, the American media just said that the Communist government did bad things and killers avenged for political reasons, as if the innocents deserved to die for the killers to get their political messages across.”

While fetishism of the West may be at an extreme in the cultural identification of Chinese students, a substantial number of them, especially upon initial arrival in the US, hold a more positive view of being “Americanized” than those who have stayed in the US for a longer period. Now, one can examine the Chinese students who falling on the other side of the spectrum—isolation.

3.2 Exclusion as Unconscious Habitus: “I Feel I am Invisible”

On a rainy afternoon, I ran to a coffee house for a scheduled interview with Cody, a White American student. Cody has been an undergraduate student at UW-Madison for eight years, having taken time off from school to work.

“So my first question is: do you have any friends who are international students? Or any Chinese international students?”

Cody leaned back, looking up and quickly blinking eyes as he was thinking. Then his tongue finally caught his thought, “Ummm… not anymore. I’ve been here since 2008 and had a large group of friends. Some of them were international but later they moved elsewhere. … There was one friend… And that’s five years ago… I don’t know if she’s Chinese or Korean, so I’m gonna say no.”

When asked whether there is a stereotypical image of how Chinese international students are perceived, Cody answered, “On this campus there definitely is: wealthy background, study-oriented, not really interacting with other White students, but it definitely goes both ways—White students don’t interact with them either.”

Another day, when Kexin – another Chinese female student – and I were eating lunch in the Co-Op, she mentioned that she felt uncomfortable in the discussions of her ethnic studies class.

“They were talking about Americanism, which is what it means to be an American, and I had nothing to say.”

“When my TA talked about how African-Americans were mistreated, her tone was indifferent. This indifference bothers me.”

“All the anger I felt in the discussion sessions and in the US overall explains why I won’t stay here after graduation.”

When I asked her, “Did you get the impression that America had serious racial problems before you came here, or is this something you realized after you came here?”

She replied, “I heard of it previously but didn’t realize it was so serious. When I talk to American students, sometimes I didn’t want them to know that I’m from China or that I’m an international student. I just wanted them to treat me like a normal student. But you could feel that they were always trying to find out what you are or treating you as an outsider… Like the way they looked at you or moved their eyebrows – I told you that I’m very sensitive to people’s facial expressions. So by the first sentence, they spoke with you, they would think, ‘This is a Chinese international student’.”

In interethnic relationships, two kinds of harms can be inflicted: active harms and passive harms.[23] Active harms are deliberate and effortful negative behavior, including examples such as blatant discrimination, microaggressions, and purposeful shutting out. Passive harms include ignoring, unreflective exclusion, and avoidance of eye contact. In contemporary American society, where blatant discrimination is a direct violation of social norms and moral codes, passive harms occur more often. However, passive harms are also more difficult to address than obvious discrimination, because the ambiguity may lead international students to attribute such negative feelings to their own sensitivity, doubting themselves for taking offense at “trivial” things.[24]

When a Chinese student, Katie, who identifies as a Catholic, told me about her feeling of being excluded at a church where there are only a few other international students, she said, “they [white Americans] did not really initiate conversations with us [international students] or just initiated superficial small talk. I talked to another Chinese student about this feeling, but she said it’s our problem. She said that whites did not want to talk to us because we were not similar enough to them, so we should be more similar to them, and it is something we are able to work on. But I don’t think it’s totally our responsibility. I think some of it is prejudice from them. But it may also be that I’m too sensitive.”

Another incident comes from my own experience:

During spring break in 2017, I participated in a program through UW-Madison to help tutor children with incarcerated parents in a predominantly African-American community in an East coast city. Seven other White students and an Indian-American student were also on the trip, none of them I knew previously.

When we finished our first day of volunteer work, we planned to take the subway home. While we were waiting for the subway, the White students formed a circle facing each other and started chatting, excluding the Indian student and me.

One White female student, who was our group leader, said excitedly: “the children are absolutely adorable! They are so clingy and hugged me immediately, and they said, ‘you have blonde hair and blue eyes’!”

Another White female student echoed, “Yeah, one of the children also told me that she really likes my eyes and eyebrows.” The other White students laughed along.

A White male student chimed in: “when I was in China, Chinese would follow me and touch my hair, cuz they hadn’t seen many foreigners.”

They laughed louder, completely oblivious to the discomfort experienced by the Indian-American student and me. Our group leader who had started the topic followed, “Oh, it’s like you’re famous!” Then she blinked at me, “Dorothy, you didn’t touch our hair! Cuz you’ve seen Americans!”

In this case, the White students on our trip were completely unaware of their insensitive remarks before I pointed them out. After I directly confronted them, they were shocked and extra careful with their conversations on the following day. However, they returned to their previous “habitus” the day after. As defined by Bourdieu, habitus refers to a set of internalized and durable dispositions resulting from social positions.[25] What disturbed me was that the students on my trip seemed to be normal White Americans at UW-Madison, if not kinder than average, because they volunteered their time and energy to go on this trip and wholeheartedly wanted to help African-American children. But in the most mundane daily interactions, another minority student and I were so naturally left out and emotionally bothered by this experience. Listening to my Indian-American peer tell me how she has become accustomed to this type of conversation, I realized that American-born minorities deal with oblivious racism all the time.

Between active and passive harms is the concept of microaggression, “the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.”[26] This concept accurately captures harms as a result of unconscious dispositions, rather than conscious beliefs. Therefore, it is possible for people who are consciously anti- racism to still unconsciously display prejudice and make minority students uncomfortable. According to Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life by Sue et al.:[27]

“The power of racial microaggressions lies in their invisibility to the perpetrator and, oftentimes, the recipient.[28] Most White Americans experience themselves as good, moral, and decent human beings who believe in equality and democracy. Thus, they find it difficult to believe that they possess biased racial attitudes and may engage in behaviors that are discriminatory.[29]”

For minority students, it would be too strong to accuse such behaviors as discrimination or racism. Yet, tt is also too psychologically burdensome to ignore such microaggressions without saying anything.

“It is difficult to identify a microaggression, especially when other explanations seem plausible. Many people of color describe a vague feeling that they have been attacked, that they have been disrespected, or that something is not right.[30] …The above incident reveals how microaggressions operate to create psychological dilemmas for both the White perpetrator and the person of color.”[31]

The reason why unconscious prejudicial dispositions exist is that racism is so prevalently entrenched in social structures and the most mundane daily rituals. Countering racism requires intentional education, or re-education, and constant efforts from educational institutions to raise cultural awareness among their students.

Small Group Discussions: “When I Was Talking They Would Look Away”

In my three years of being an undergraduate student, I noticed a repetitive problem recounted to me by many Chinese students from different areas and disciplines. This problem is the discomfort they experience in group projects and small group discussions.

Eli Anderson, in his paper on White Space, pointed out that, “White people typically avoid Black space, but black people are required to navigate the white space as a condition of their existence.”[32] For Chinese students who hope to avoid harms or microaggressions from White counterparts, they avoid being in spaces dominated by White Americans during social time by hanging out with other Chinese students. But group projects are frequent yet unavoidable occasions.

Small in-class group discussions are also a setting for relatively free-flowing communication. Unlike big group discussions, where students raise their hands to indicate cues to speak, conversations in group projects are governed by unspecified conversational norms for turn-taking, without an authority figure whose presence may foster an inclusive environment. Therefore, the responsibility to facilitate conversations necessarily falls onto one of the students who is perceived as competent and reliable. According to my observations over the years, this tends to be a White male student. In ethnomethodological terms, the system for turn-taking in conversation is similar to an economy, as the practices we use for turn-taking involve distributing something of value.[33] White students often get more turns in conversations, as they tend to be the first speakers, employ the power of designating the next speaker, and are more likely to interrupt other students’ turns.

“We are all Seniors in business school… and the other four White students already knew each other since they took classes before, so they had a lot to talk about with each other but I didn’t know them before since I hung out mainly with Chinese… So I was totally left out… I guess it’s really [because of] my personality, that I lack the social skills to talk with them… Personality determines fate.” – A female student from Business School.

“There were five people in our group and only four people were supposed to give the presentation, so we needed to ‘get rid of’ one person. There were three White guys and another Chinese guy and me. I got to stay in the group probably because I was the only girl, but another quiet Chinese guy was naturally left out and nobody ever asked him what he thought, or whether he wanted to stay in the group. I feel really sorry for him.” – A female student from Natural Sciences

“I can see that White students are not very interested when we [Chinese students] are talking, but they always have a good time with each other. I knew they were not interested in what I said because when I was talking, they would look away or look around and just clearly looked distracted… But it could be MY problem, that I’m too sensitive and like to pay attention to people’s facial expressions.” – A female student from Social Sciences

“My teammates finished up the (lab) assignments really fast, and they left earlier. I thought something was wrong about their method, but every time I have something to say, they would just look at me that way, as if they are about to tell me that I’m stupid, that I know nothing, so don’t ever speak up against them. I thought their method was wrong so I stayed alone and worked on it slowly. Later I also went to ask the TA, and it turned out their answers were completely wrong. Their answers are ALWAYS wrong. But these two guys are so domineering. They wanna get the tasks done as soon as possible, so they totally dominated the discussion, saying that their method was correct and then they just left… I don’t wanna challenge them. I’ve tried to do that kind a lot last semester, and I’ve had enough. Those two guys are expressing their opinions all the time. They have a lot to say. I don’t. I also don’t get a chance to express my opinion when I have one.” – A female student from Engineering

Regarding this problem, I propose several solutions according to my observations of the faculty’s teaching practices. First, it is helpful to introduce an ice-breaking activity in class. Giving students some time to get to know each other and discover commonalities would make discussions more relaxed and comfortable. Second, it is crucial to explicitly raise awareness about the importance of inclusivity. For example, if the instructor can prompt students to make discussions more inclusive, and ask students to keep their peers in mind in small-group discussions or group projects. Third, one can introduce more structure in small-group discussions, such as asking students to make sure that everyone in the group gets a chance to speak. It is okay for any student to decline this chance, but it should be made clear that this chance is available. Fourth, create more opportunities for dyad interaction, meaning working in pairs rather than in groups. Social intimacy exponentially increases as the number of people in a group decreases.[34] In a dyad, two students are more pressured to pay close attention to each other’s reactions, and exclusion would be more difficult.

Complexities in Interethnic Relationships

Between fetishizing the West and facing exclusion, other inter-connected factors also influence the interactions of Chinese international students with their American peers. Here, the complexities I identify include personality, language barriers, cultural differences, and the use of language. These factors are closely related to the racial and ethnic identity of Chinese students, but do not necessarily equate with these demographic variables. For example, if a White American student chooses to communicate less frequently with a Chinese student because of her introverted personality, this tension may be harder to define as “racist.” While still racial in nature, this social interaction can be completely due to the Chinese student’s identity. I will briefly introduce the first three factors and spend relatively more time explaining the fourth complexity – language use.

To begin, the apparent introversion of some Chinese students often distances them from American students. Such introversion is closely linked to causes including perceived lack of commonalities, language barriers, cultural upbringing that discourages expression, and difficulty mastering American conversational norms.[35] Under Western values, talkative people tend to be viewed as more competent, in comparison to those who talk less.[36] In Chinese culture, however, listening is emphasized over talking, and talking is seen as mainly a medium to convey crucial information. As Cain stated in her book Quiet, Asian culture tends to think that “quietness and introspection are signs of deep thought and higher truth. Words are potentially dangerous weapons that reveal things better left unsaid.”[37]

Secondly, language barriers intuitively deter Chinese students from initiating conversations with English-speakers.[38] Chinese international students who grew up in China, a non-English speaking country, face the expectation of speaking English as if it were their first language, both socially and academically upon their arrival at American colleges. Even when Chinese students achieve English fluency, their English-speaking ability is not viewed as the result of hard work or talent, in comparison to an American student’s second language abilities, rather taken for granted, frowned upon, treated impatiently, or quickly identified as alien.

While language barriers may be an issue, another significant but often hidden obstacle to communication with American students lies in the process of learning how a language is spoken. Specifically, Chinese international students struggle with secondary characteristics that come along with English words, including slang expressions, gesturing, accents, and facial reactions. In conversational analysis, words perform social actions, and such interactions are a social institution with its own principles and norms.[39] The ways words are spoken are, at least to some extent, culturally specific. For instance, American students usually have more exaggerated ways of speaking with more varied facial expressions, pitches of voice, and gesturing. They also employ more utterances of exclamatory words when responding, such as “oh,” “wow,” and “omg.” Chinese students may not deploy these manners of speaking, and they are quickly and automatically categorized as outsiders. This also implies that cultural code-switching involves the “performances” that accompany the language, an implicit expectation that is hard to learn and master.

Thirdly, the cultural differences between Chinese and American lifestyles can be another factor contributing to a more distant inter-ethnic relationship. Sam, a senior White American student, is also a group leader in the International Bridge Program. He once pointed out that in Bridge, where international students and American students are paired up to foster inter-cultural understanding, American students tend to get along better with European students. As Sam mentioned, this is not necessarily because they welcome Europeans more, solely due to their shared race, but also due to a “closer alignment of culture.” For example, European students are usually thrilled to join American students at parties with loud music and alcohol, while Asian students may not be as used to this form of entertainment. Here, “not going to the party” may not be in and of itself racial, but could lead to a more distant relationship between Asian students and American students.

Finally, language use is a fourth factor to consider, and a different concept from language barriers. In this paper, language barrier concerns the ability to speak English in a way that is similar to upper-middle-class white American students. But language use refers to the conscious act of choosing which language to speak under which context. Here, I introduce the theme of language-switching. Usually, one assumes that Chinese international students would speak English when English speakers are present, and speak Chinese when they are talking among themselves. However, language can be manipulated to imply larger meanings, such as cultural identification. Similarly, when Chinese students do not intend to use language for exclusion, linguistic comfort may still achieve this effect, notably when Chinese students speak Chinese with one another in the presence of other English speakers.

Language-switching in an English-speaking context: “We Should Speak Chinese”

Ying, the supervisor at a psychology lab I work at, graduated from a top Chinese university and is currently a Ph.D. student in the social psychology program. Ying has stayed in the US for about six or seven years and lives with her American boyfriend. In the lab meeting, she referred to “Americans” as “we”, and referred to the “American government” as “our government.”

During a Thanksgiving break, Ying invited research assistants to her house to play board games. When she picked me up from my place, we had one-on-one interactions in the car.

“How have you been?” As she started the conversation with English, I answered back “good” in English.

Both of us were well aware of each other’s Chinese identity, yet we did not speak Chinese for the whole night, even when we were at her place and a Chinese-grad-student-couple, who are her boyfriend’s friends, joined our game. That night, four Chinese international students were playing board games with one White American—Ying’s boyfriend, yet all of us did not speak a single sentence of Chinese to each other, even when Ying’s boyfriend was not present.

From later interactions over subsequent months, Ying implied several times (though never directly) that she regarded herself as more American than Chinese, even though she was born in China and did not come to the US until she was pursuing a doctoral degree. Here, her cultural identification might account for her choice of language. On other occasions, Chinese people that I interacted with frequently switched from English to Chinese upon recognizing my Chinese identity.

When I checked out a laptop at the library, the librarian in charge was Chinese and requested to see my ID in order to check out a laptop for me. When he saw my passport, he smiled at me and said in Chinese, “We should speak Chinese.” He then got the laptop for me and told me in Chinese the time to return the laptop.

In this case, the librarian uttered a formal reminder before language-switching— “We should speak Chinese.” Often, other Chinese peers I spoke with switched directly to Chinese without a formal statement.

When I walked into the bank to deposit a cheque one day, the bank teller was a Chinese woman who looked fairly young and energetic. She said “hi” to me very friendly and excited manner. As soon as I approached her and she peeked at me from a closer distance, she greeted in Chinese, “You wanna get a deposit, right?”

Therefore, whether language-switching is present or not can serve as an indication of a Chinese student’s cultural identification. As defined here, language-switching refers to a shift in language according to the cultural background of the people one is interacting with. A related concept is frame-switching, which occurs when a bicultural person “shifts between interpretative frames rooted in different cultures in response to cues in the social environment.”[40] A language is often associated with a distinct cultural system, which further entails a distinct set of values and ways of thinking.[41] In a psychological experiment, Asian Americans primed with traditional Asian symbols (for example, seeing a dragon picture) later identified more with Asian culture, and vice versa if they were primed with American symbols (seeing an American flag).[42]

Language-switching does not happen all the time and does not appear to happen randomly. Whether it happens or not depends on sets of complicated beliefs about cultural identification and in-group member relationships. The presence of language-switching also depends on the context of the interactions, and the extent to which this context is dominated by a certain language. For example, in academic or formal settings such as classroom discussions, conferences, and workshops, Chinese students are more pressured to speak English with each other. Therefore, the absence of language-switching in non-pressured situations may indicate that the person finds speaking English more comfortable or more aligned with one’s cultural identity.

For a student, speaking English with another person who shares a non-English native tongue could be a way of creating distance from that in-group member, who might assume her cultural identification by her ethnicity. For example, Taiwanese students often speak English with Chinese students even if they speak Chinese among themselves.

One morning, when I got up from bed and went downstairs for breakfast, I saw Penny, a Taiwanese student living in the Co-Op, talking to her Taiwanese boyfriend in Chinese.

As I approached their table to grab a book that I left there last night, they made room for me and Penny blurted out in English, “Sorry! Did you sit here before? Did we take your seat?”

Similar language-switching from Chinese to English happens frequently among other Taiwanese students that I have interacted with. This is unlikely to be a matter of understanding, but possibly motivated by a sense of political distance created by a boundary of language.

Language-switching in a Chinese-speaking Context: “Speaking English Is Unnatural”

If language use can show cultural identification with American culture by creating a boundary between a student and an in-group member of one’s home culture, it can also be used to identify with in-group members or exclude outgroups of a different cultural origin. When Chinese is the dominant language in a given context, not performing language-switching from Chinese to English when non-Chinese speakers are present creates a boundary, regardless of intention.

When the Chinese students were playing a board game in the dining room one night, I walked past them and saw a White American student, Sam, watching them play. I turned to the table and asked the Chinese students, who are all my friends, to speak English, since I did not want Sam to feel excluded. My Chinese friends paused the game and looked at me for a few seconds. Then they ignored me and continued the game in Chinese. Later I asked one of my Chinese friends whether she wanted to exclude Sam, she denied it and said speaking English while playing an exciting board game was unnatural.

This incident suggests several things. First, as the population of Chinese students grows, Chinese students form their own sub-groups on American campuses and are thus able to exclude non-Chinese speakers simply by being the majority in certain occasions. Second, Chinese students can stick to this subgroup during free time, so there is no longer a pressing need to speak or practice English to “survive” in a social context. Decades ago, when only a handful of Chinese students attended US universities, the need to assimilate would have been much stronger. Third, in cases where Chinese students do not intend to exclude English-speakers, English-speakers can still feel excluded and uncomfortable approaching Chinese international students, resulting in further division between Chinese and English speakers. For example, an American student once wrote in an email exchange, in response to the question “When do you feel international students are unapproachable?”:

“I find it difficult to initiate a conversation with an international student when they are already discussing with another international student in their own language. I find it difficult because 1) I don’t want to interrupt and 2) I feel somewhat bad for forcing them to talk to me in English when they seem more comfortable talking in their native language. There have been no other scenarios where I felt it be difficult to talk to an international student.”

When the linguistic boundary between Chinese speakers and English speakers is breached, it does not necessarily imply better merging. Rather, it can in fact elicit negative social consequences.

Wendy is a Caucasian American Senior majoring in Chinese. When I met her at the Co-Op, I often had the urge to talk to her, but she was always silent and did not make any eye contact with people around her. Therefore, I only found out that she could understand Chinese several months after she lived in the Co-Op, when I finally talked to her. One day when I entered the dining room, I saw Xinyue, a Chinese Senior student, profusely apologizing to Wendy in English.

I asked Xinyue what happened. Xinyue leaned closer to me, lowered her voice with a hand covering her mouth, and whispered, “I just said something really bad about America, and I forgot that the girl sitting next to me can understand Chinese damn well. She might read Chinese better than I do!”

“Oh, what did she say?”

“She said she didn’t pay attention to what I was saying. God. If she did, then that would be disastrous. I know it’s really mean for me to say it.” Xinyue looked terribly regretful.

After Xinyue left, Wendy was still eating, so I sat next to her and asked, in Chinese, about her comparative literature courses.

“I am reading poetries from Ming and Qing Dynasty. At the same time, I am doing a big research project on Chinese ancient female poets.” Usually silent and introverted, Wendy now seemed really excited as she talked about what she was learning. I could see that she had tons of passion for Chinese literature.

Jane, a Chinese Junior student passing by was drawn in by our conversation and started to ask Wendy questions about the poets she was reading. As Wendy listed several Chinese works of literature, Jane paused and looked a bit embarrassed. Then she said, “I have only read some of them. Classical Chinese is difficult to understand.”

“Yeah, but they are so interesting!” Wendy ensued.

Jane was left wordless and I joked, “Wendy’s Chinese is better than ours!” I then continued to ask, “How about your speaking and listening? You can understand what Chinese students here are talking about, right?”

“Most of the time,” Wendy smiled shyly and expected my astonishment.

“Why don’t you try to speak Chinese with us?”

“It’s gonna be awkward. I tried to do so with Chinese people before. Usually, they would freak out and asked me to say more Chinese, so I said, “Ni Hao, Wo Shi Wendy[43].” They would say “do more self-introduction”, and then I would do an awkward self-introduction. Then they would say “it’s so cute!” in English, and I never got the chance to have real conversations with Chinese people.”

I laughed out loud as I could easily imagine the situation.

The bilingualism of Chinese students enables them to perform language-switching, and their growing population gives them a unique platform to easily identify in-group members and (inadvertently or not) exclude English-speakers. This form of power may be one of the reasons why Chinese students are more subject to hostility from English-speakers, compared to the less populous demographics of other international students and American-born minorities, both of which are forced to speak English much more frequently.

Oftentimes, at dinner inside the Co-Op, where students from around the world are seated around a big round table, Asian students of other ethnicities exchange conversations with both other international students and American students. But Chinese students are of a bigger number, and talk to one another in Chinese, therefore building a boundary that makes other students either not want to “intrude” or lose interest in conversation altogether. On the other hand, Chinese students speaking English among themselves for the sake of appearing more inclusive towards English speakers is a rather unnatural and overly intentional act. Therefore, language use adds complexity and difficulty to forming positive interethnic relationships.

This combination of factors, in addition to racial prejudices and the ambiguity of microaggressions and other passive harms, can explain the dilemma that Chinese international students face. Chinese students are constantly unsure of the “real reason” why they cannot quite “click” with Americans, and are thus unsure what to do – speak up about their discomfort or let it go. Understanding these different factors, however, better enable us to notice the various implicit expectations White American students have toward minorities and international students.

Conclusion

Drawing on fieldwork and interviews I completed at UW-Madison as an undergraduate student, this paper shows the considerable dilemma facing a growing number of Chinese students, namely the choice between assimilating into American culture and sticking with other Chinese students. In these decision-making processes, Chinese students constantly negotiate language barriers and deep implications for their identities. Furthermore, on a daily basis, Chinese students have to deal with explicit and, more often, implicit discrimination inside and outside the classroom, especially in informally structured in-class group discussions. Most importantly, Chinese students find themselves perpetually unsure about the reasons behind their frequent experiences of exclusion and isolation, caught between blaming themselves and speaking out about their discomfort.

The emotions felt by minority or vulnerable groups towards those higher on the social ladder are always complicated. There is forever a tension between admiring, imitating, or being assimilated into the dominant group, while simultaneously figuring out ways to deal with prejudice, hostility, or even exploitation. This dilemma of cultural identification and identity development is not restricted to Chinese international students at UW-Madison. Rather, it pertains to all minorities experiencing a power imbalance when in contact with a more dominant group or culture. Nonetheless, it is key to keep in mind the unique features of Chinese international students, in that they are not only people of color, but also foreigners who are less familiar with American culture than American-born minorities. Even though they face some of the same discrimination and challenges experienced by American minorities, Chinese international students are often left out of the category of disadvantaged or underrepresented groups, given their relatively higher socio-economic status. In fact, Chinese international students are perceived more often as clients to whom college education is sold. However, if the nature of the education is a mere business transaction, then Chinese international students are barely receiving the respect that clients deserve.

There are three major limitations specific to my ethnography. First, I relied on note-taking without any audio-recording device. Second, most of the Chinese students I observed and interacted with were female students. Third, my field site is a Midwest public institution historically dominated by a White population. Future research about the experience of Chinese international students in the US can benefit from further attention to the effects of gender on interethnic relationships, given that Asian women and men are viewed differently in American society, the former being a target of sexual objectification and the latter often portrayed as insufficiently masculine.[44] Future research can also explore the campus climate in coastal areas or Southern parts of the US, which are culturally different from schools in the Midwest. It is key that the reader keeps in mind the universal and the specific implications of this ethnographic work.

At the time of completing this project, Yuqing Wu was an undergraduate student at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied sociology, philosophy, and psychology. She is now a first-year sociology PhD student at Yale University.

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[1] In this essay, “Chinese students” will refer to Chinese international students only, and not to Chinese American students.

[2] https://www.iie.org/Research-and-Insights/Open-Doors/Data/International-Students/Places-of-Origin/Leading-Places-of-Origin/2015-16

[3] http://www.iie.org/Services/Project-Atlas/United-States/International-Students-In-US#.WFB2Ca9SM2x

[4] UW-Madison Data Digest 2007-2008: https://registrar.wiscweb.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2017/09/report-enrollment-2007-2008fall.pdf

UW-Madison Data Digest 2017-2018:

https://registrar.wiscweb.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2017/10/report-enrollment-2017fall.pdf

[5] Peter Bodycott, “Choosing a Higher Education Study Abroad Destination: What Mainland Chinese Parents and Students Rate as Important,” Journal of research in International education 8, no. 3 (2009); Yuxin Cheng, “Research on Chinese Overseas Students’ Choice to Study in the United States and Their Preference to Stay There after Graduation” (BCE Társadalomtudományi és Nemzetközi Kapcsolatok Kar, 2017); Jessica Griner and Allison Sobol, “Chinese Students’ Motivations for Studying Abroad,” Global Studies Journal 7, no. 1 (2014); Dennis T Yang, The Pursuit of the Chinese Dream in America: Chinese Undergraduate Students at American Universities (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).

[6] David A Watkins and John B Biggs, The Chinese Learner: Cultural, Psychological, and Contextual Influences (ERIC, 1996); Kun Yan and David C Berliner, “Chinese International Students’ Personal and Sociocultural Stressors in the United States,” Journal of college student development 54, no. 1 (2013).

[7] Brooke Larmer, “Alienation 101,” The Economists (2017).

[8] To prevent identification, I use pseudonyms for people in this paper. Whether the pseudonym is an English or a Chinese name depends on which name the student prefers to be called in daily life—their given or their chosen English name.

[9] Yang, The Pursuit of the Chinese Dream in America: Chinese Undergraduate Students at American Universities.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Damien Ma and William Adams, In Line Behind a Billion People: How Scarcity Will Define China’s Ascent in the Next Decade (Pearson Education, 2014).

[12] A Pestotnik, “Chinese Students Still Struggle at the University of Iowa,” Iowa City (2015).

[13] Ibid.

[14]Yang, The Pursuit of the Chinese Dream in America: Chinese Undergraduate Students at American Universities; Brooke Larmer, “The Long March from China to the Ivies,” The Economists (2016).

[15] Yang, The Pursuit of the Chinese Dream in America: Chinese Undergraduate Students at American Universities.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Eric PH Li, Hyun Jeong Min, and Russell W Belk, “Skin Lightening and Beauty in Four Asian Cultures,” ACR North American Advances (2008).

[18] Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, Race & Racisms: A Critical Approach (Oxford University Press New York, 2015).

[19] Ibid.

[20] Wyatt MacGaffey, “African Objects and the Idea of Fetish,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 25, no. 1 (1994).

[21] Emma Green, “When Western Journalists Loved China’s Communists,” The Atlantic (2013).

[22] Patrick Winn, “Trump Says Us Jobs Get ‘Stolen’ by China. Well, Here Are the Countries ‘Stealing’ Chinese Jobs” ” Global Post (2016).

[23] Amy JC Cuddy, Susan T Fiske, and Peter Glick, “The Bias Map: Behaviors from Intergroup Affect and Stereotypes,” Journal of personality and social psychology 92, no. 4 (2007).

[24] Daniel Solorzano, Miguel Ceja, and Tara Yosso, “Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students,” Journal of Negro Education (2000).

[25] Pierre Bourdieu, “Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (R. Nice, Trans.),” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).

[26] Derald Wing Sue et al., “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Implications for Clinical Practice,” American psychologist 62, no. 4 (2007).

[27] Ibid.

[28] Derald Wing Sue, “Racism and the Conspiracy of Silence: Presidential Address,” The Counseling Psychologist 33, no. 1 (2005).

[29] “Whiteness and Ethnocentric Monoculturalism: Making the” Invisible” Visible,” American Psychologist 59, no. 8 (2004).

[30] Anderson J Franklin, From Brotherhood to Manhood: How Black Men Rescue Their Relationships and Dreams from the Invisibility Syndrome (Wiley Hoboken, NJ, 2004); Landon D Reid and Phanikiran Radhakrishnan, “Race Matters: The Relation between Race and General Campus Climate,” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 9, no. 3 (2003).

[31] Sue et al., “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Implications for Clinical Practice.”

[32] Elijah Anderson, “The White Space,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1, no. 1 (2015).

[33] Harvey Sacks, Emanuel A Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson, “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn Taking for Conversation,” in Studies in the Organization of Conversational Interaction (Elsevier, 1978).

[34] David E Rohall, Melissa A Milkie, and Jeffrey W Lucas, Social Psychology: Sociological Perspectives (Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2007).

[35] Jeanne L Tsai, Robert W Levenson, and Laura L Carstensen, “Autonomic, Subjective, and Expressive Responses to Emotional Films in Older and Younger Chinese Americans and European Americans,” Psychology and aging 15, no. 4 (2000).

[36] Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (Broadway Books, 2013).

[37] Ibid.

[38] Larmer, “Alienation 101.”

[39] Steven E. Clayman and Virginia Teas Gill, “Conversation Analysis,” in The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

[40] Ying-yi Hong et al., “Multicultural Minds: A Dynamic Constructivist Approach to Culture and Cognition,” American psychologist 55, no. 7 (2000).

[41] Samuel L Gaertner and John P McLaughlin, “Racial Stereotypes: Associations and Ascriptions of Positive and Negative Characteristics,” Social Psychology Quarterly (1983); Nancy Cantor et al., “On Motivation and the Self-Concept,” (1986); John R Anderson, Language, Memory, and Thought (Psychology Press, 2013); John R Anderson, Language, Memory, and Thought (Psychology Press, 2013); Francis LK Hsu, “Americans and Chinese: Two Ways of Life. By Stuart Gerry Brown,” (1953); Michael W Morris and Kaiping Peng, “Culture and Cause: American and Chinese Attributions for Social and Physical Events,” Journal of Personality and Social psychology 67, no. 6 (1994).

[42] Ying-Yi Hong, Chi-Yue Chiu, and Tracy Man Kung, “Bringing Culture out in Front: Effects of Cultural Meaning System Activation on Social Cognition,” Progress in Asian social psychology 1 (1997).

[43] Meaning “Hello, I’m Wendy”

[44] Christian Rudder, “How Your Race Affects the Messages You Get,” Ok Trends Weblog (2016).