Back to School Looks Different for Asian Kids in White Neighborhoods
More than a third of Asian American public school students attend a school where fewer than 1 in 10 classmates are Asian. In a lot of suburbs that room is mostly White, and a homemade lunch can be the first thing anyone comments on.
The night before school, the lunch bag is the whole conversation. Dumplings, leftover curry, a thermos of rice. In the car, a kid asks if a sandwich would be easier.
That question comes up more often when almost nobody else brings the same lunch. Pew Research Center's look at federal school records found that 36% of Asian American public school students go to a school where fewer than 1 in 10 classmates are Asian.
In a lot of suburbs, the rest of that room is mostly White. Somebody at the table is going to notice.
Where the numbers come from
School composition: Pew Research Center, “U.S. public school students often go to schools where at least half of their peers are the same race or ethnicity” (Dec. 15, 2021), analysis of NCES public-school enrollment. Asian Americans were about 5% of public school students. 86% attended a school where fewer than half of classmates were Asian; 36% attended a school where fewer than 10% were Asian American. Later concentration: NCES, Racial/Ethnic Enrollment in Public Schools, fall 2022. 4% of Asian students attended a school that was at least 75% Asian. More than half of American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, and Pacific Islander students attended schools where less than 25% of students were their own race or ethnicity. Hate speech: Kevin A. Gee (UC Davis), North Cooc (University of Texas at Austin), and Peter Yu, “Hate Speech Against Asian American Youth,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2024), doi:10.1007/s10964-024-01987-8. School Crime Supplement, 2015, 2017, and 2019; 938 Asian American adolescents. About 7% (about 1 in 15) reported hate speech at school; 86% of those experiences were tied to race and 63% to ethnicity. Bullying: NCES Condition of Education, Student Bullying, school year 2021-22 (School Crime Supplement). 9% of Asian students ages 12-18 reported being bullied during school, compared with 19.2% of students overall and 22% of White students. Food and names: Washington State Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs, AAPI Bullying Prevention Task Force report (work from 2014-2016), which collected student accounts of teasing over food, language, names, and appearance, including in predominantly White districts. The task force is a qualitative record, not a national rate.
More than a third of Asian American students attend a school where fewer than 1 in 10 classmates are Asian, so a lunch or a name can feel public in the first weeks. About 1 in 15 reported hate speech at school in federal surveys, while bullying reports for Asian students were lower than the national rate. The useful line in the car is that they can eat, share, or swap the lunch without giving a speech.
How common it is to be one of a few
Asian Americans are about 5% of public school students, which is why those rooms are easy to land in. In the same Pew count, 86% of Asian American students attend a school where Asian classmates are less than half the kids.
By fall 2022, the National Center for Education Statistics found only 4% of Asian students in a school that was at least three-quarters Asian. More than half were in schools where fewer than a quarter of the students were Asian.
A White neighborhood school is one version of that. A mixed school where Asian kids are still a small group is another.
Before anyone is mean
The kid who asks for a sandwich has often already done the math. A smell that is comfort at dinner can get a comment in a cafeteria. Students told a Washington state task force on Asian American and Pacific Islander bullying that the teasing covered food, and also language, names, and looks.
Roll call is the other early one. If the teacher stumbles, someone may laugh, and your child may offer a nickname before anyone asks.
A holiday the school treats as a normal day can bring the feeling back. Lunar New Year or Diwali, on a day everyone else is having an ordinary Tuesday, means your child is explaining a calendar the class was not given.
Most of it never gets reported
Kevin Gee, an education researcher at the University of California, Davis, studied this with North Cooc at the University of Texas at Austin. In federal school surveys from 2015, 2017, and 2019, about 7% of Asian American adolescents, roughly 1 in 15, said they were targets of hate speech at school. In their sample, 86% of that speech was about race.
The bullying tally is smaller. In the 2021-22 school year, 9% of Asian students said they had been bullied, against 19% of students overall.
The week can still sting without becoming a report: a look at the thermos, a laugh when a name comes out wrong, leftovers left on the counter.
On the drive
You can pack the food your family actually eats and still give your child a choice. Try: "You can eat it, share it, or swap it. You do not have to explain it."
Ask what they want their name to sound like this year. The way your family says it, a shorter version, or both. They can change their mind in October.
If a holiday is coming that school will skip, ask whether they want the teacher to know. One sentence is enough. The snack can stay home.