AAACE 2021 Annual Conference

autoethnography, race, diversity, higher education, professoriate

Two professors of Color, an Asian man and an African American woman, describe and analyze their academic journeys as students and faculty members by detailing their struggles for place and acceptance in higher education using their cross-racial autoethnographic research approach. Some implications for research and practice will also be provided.

The purpose of this presentation is to have a better understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in academia from two professors’ perspectives on race, racism, and positionality. The relevant literature of DEI has explored by various groups in terms of race, gender, class, sexuality, and gender identities and has addressed issues such as implicit biases, microaggressions, and stereotypes among different groups. However, such literature has mostly focused on the differences rather than the commonalities or interlocking aspects of DEI. In this presentation, based on their autoethnographic projects, two professors of Color, an Asian man and an African American woman, describe and analyze their academic journeys as students and faculty, detailing their struggles for place and acceptance. Using cross-racial-autoethnography, they explored the common ground of their experiences, such as rejection, isolation, tokenism, and bullying, which are traditionally treated as mutually exclusive commonalities of Asian Americans and African Americans in the literature of diversity and multiculturalism. In addition, they found contested terrain: cross-cultural misunderstandings and conflicts, defining identity and diasporic place, and historic positioning. Through their individual and joint research on race, gender, and LGBTQ+ issues in the academic workplace, they have established their careers and found a measure of solace.