Making Sense of Segregation: Asian American Youth Perspectives

Abstract

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.

Across many selective public high schools across the country, Asian American students have increasingly formed the majority. Recent efforts to reform selective high school admissions to expand Black and Latine students’ access have inspired fierce opposition among Asian American and Asian immigrant parents and community leaders in districts such as San Francisco (Fuller, 2022), Boston (Vaznis, 2022), Fairfax County, Virginia (Natanson, 2021), and New York City (Fu & Blissett, 2024; Liu et al., 2023). These stakeholders argue that eliminating test-based admissions and other forms of academic selectiveness discriminates against Asian American students, who, they claim, work hard to earn impressive grades and high scores on admissions exams (Liu et al., 2023). As these cases demonstrate, Asian immigrant and Asian American parents are increasingly shaping the racial politics of desegregation and integration policy. While a growing body of literature attends to the perspectives of Asian American parents and other adults (Fu & Blissett, 2024; Liu et al., 2023; Quinn, 2019; Robles, 2007), the perspectives and experiences of Asian American students themselves regarding race and access to selective schools remain under-examined.

In this study, I investigate the views of 64 ethnically diverse high school students and recent alumni identifying as Asian American and who attended New York City (NYC) public high schools as part of the graduating classes of 2021–2026. NYC is an ideal study site, given its status as one of the most segregated public school districts in the nation, largely due to the segregating effects of its competitive school choice system, and where Asian American students are overrepresented at the most selective, so-called “specialized” high schools (Cohen, 2021; Kucsera & Orfield, 2014). NYC is also home to one of the nation’s largest and most diverse Asian American communities (Hong, 2021; NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, 2020). I ask: How do diverse Asian American students in NYC make sense of racial and socioeconomic segregation across selective and nonselective public high schools? What does their sensemaking reveal about their understandings of race, class, and power?

I employ conceptual tools from frame analysis, specifically, frames for making sense of race, class, and educational opportunity (Bonilla-Silva, 2021; Poon et al., 2019; Warikoo, 2016). I find that nearly all interviewees believed that the lack of diversity at selective high schools is problematic, but they had different perspectives on the nature of the problem and how to remedy it. Students’ perspectives were shaped by their various frames for interpreting race and class inequity. Most participants employed an abstract liberalism frame (Bonilla-Silva, 2021; Poon et al., 2019), explaining the overrepresentation of Asian American students at specialized high schools, and the underrepresentation of Black and Latine students, in terms of inequitable access to resources. Many interviewees similarly drew upon a culture of poverty frame, positing that Black and Latine families prioritize education less than Asian immigrant families do. These color evasive frames (Annamma et al., 2017; Warikoo, 2016) lacked a critical analysis of race and power and neglected to recognize how structural racism shapes educational access. Some students employed a conscious compromise frame, critiquing segregation across selective and nonselective high schools as undermining the individual benefits of diversity (Poon et al., 2019). Fewer participants employed a power analysis frame (Warikoo, 2016), pointing to the systemic factors shaping the racialized structure of educational opportunity. These interviewees were generally among the older students in the sample, and they shared experiences of racial marginalization at predominantly White schools. Moreover, students espousing a power analysis frame had out-of-school experience in youth development organizations, including programs geared toward shaping youths’ capacities as community organizers and advocates. These experiences appear to have equipped students with the analytic tools for making sense of race and power; specifically, how Asian Americans are racially marginalized relative to White people, yet experience racial privilege relative to their Black and Latine peers.

This analysis reveals that most students had minimal language and analytic tools to discuss race and power, alongside limited frameworks for making sense of their own Asian American racial identity in the context of school segregation, perhaps unsurprising given the ambiguous racialization of Asian Americans in the United States (Okihiro, 2014). Moreover, findings illustrate the ubiquity and durability of color evasive meritocratic ideology (Au, 2016; Khan, 2011; Kolluri, 2025). Findings extend research on how competitive school choice promotes “civic individualism” (Phillippo, 2019), encouraging students to pursue their own academic advancement with little attention to how the system undermines racial equity and opportunity more broadly. Finally, findings hold implications for the racial politics of affirmative action in higher education. Asian Americans who oppose affirmative action often draw on meritocratic ideology and deficit narratives of Black and Latine students, revealing their incomplete understanding of the systemic factors shaping racialized access to elite education (E. Park et al., 2024; Poon et al., 2019). Findings from this study suggest that the next generation of Asian American leaders may reproduce such narratives in the absence of educational experiences, in and out of schools, that foster their critical racial consciousness.

Background: Asian American Racialization and Youth Racial Identity Development

Scholars have delineated how race is socially, politically, and legally constructed in the United States. These processes of racial construction, or racialization, create and maintain racial categories in a manner that supports White supremacy and oppresses those perceived to be outside of Whiteness, especially people racialized as Black (Haney López, 2006; Mills, 1997; Omi & Winant, 2015). Scholars further claim that Asian Americans are racialized relationally to other racial groups in a process of ongoing negotiation and contestation (Bow, 2010; C. J. Kim, 2000, 2023). For example, C. J. Kim (2000, 2023) argues that the relational process of “racial triangulation” simultaneously positions Asian Americans as superior to Black Americans and subordinate to White Americans. According to C. J. Kim (2000, 2023), racializing Asian Americans in this manner reinforces White supremacy and anti-Blackness. Similar theories of racialization emphasize Asian Americans’ ambiguous and “interstitial” position between Blackness and Whiteness (Bow, 2010; Okihiro, 2014), with legal definitions of Whiteness shifting over time to include or exclude Asian Americans (Ancheta, 2006; Haney López, 2006).

The panethnic term “Asian American” emerged in the 1960s, when ethnically diverse activists of Asian descent came together in a burgeoning social movement that drew inspiration from the Black Power movement. In addition to fighting anti-Asian racism and violence, Asian American activists advocated in solidarity with their Black, Latine, and Indigenous peers. To illustrate, Asian American students at San Francisco State College and the University of California, Berkeley, participated in the multiracial Third World Liberation Front student strike to demand ethnic studies (Choy, 2022). Simultaneously, however, the “model minority” concept emerged to cast doubt on the Civil Rights Movement by suggesting that Asian Americans achieved success without government support and blaming Black Americans for neglecting to do the same (S. J. Lee, 2009). Thus, despite this and other examples of Black and Asian solidarity, Asian Americans have continued to be racially positioned as superior to Black Americans.

Public schools are a key site in which Asian American students are racialized as model minorities who are quiet, studious, and high-achieving. To illustrate, teachers often express higher academic expectations of Asian American students relative to other students of color (J. Lee & Zhou, 2015), often to justify racialized systems of academic tracking (S. J. Lee, 2009; Ochoa, 2013). Parents and other stakeholders also leverage the model minority narrative to defend the overrepresentation of Asian American students at academically selective schools in NYC, San Francisco, and other districts, a perspective underpinned by anti-Black racism (Fu & Blissett, 2024; Liu et al., 2023; Robles, 2007). Notably, youth who do not conform to model minority expectations may experience “ideological Blackening,” where teachers perceive that these students’ academic and social struggles stem from personal shortcomings, similar to how school personnel often blame Black students for their low academic achievements (S. J. Lee, 2005; S. J. Lee et al., 2017). Relatedly, schools often racialize Asian American students as “perpetual foreigners” who are unassimilable “others.” For example, to explain the academic and social challenges that some Southeast Asian immigrant students experience, teachers often claim that these students’ home languages and cultures are incompatible with the dominant norms of schooling, while neglecting to consider how schools themselves maintain structural barriers to success (S. J. Lee, 2005; Ngo, 2009).

Asian American youth are keenly aware of how they are racialized relative to other racial groups, and they often draw upon dominant racial narratives and stereotypes when making sense of their own racial identities (Way et al., 2013). To illustrate, many Asian American youth embrace the model minority narrative as a strategy for aligning themselves with Whiteness, distancing themselves from Blackness, and protecting themselves from racial discrimination (S. J. Lee, 2009; G. C. Park, 2011; Pyke & Dang, 2003). Simultaneously, many Asian American youth exhibit an acute understanding of the “perpetual foreigner” narrative and deploy it when attempting to define themselves as assimilated Americans who are proximate to Whiteness and distant from Blackness (Pyke & Dang, 2003).

In contrast, a burgeoning body of scholarship highlights how some Asian American youth recognize how racial stereotypes reinforce White supremacy as a way of oppressing all people of color (Abad, 2021; Castillo & Debs, 2025; Kwon, 2013; S. J. Lee et al., 2020; Nguyen & Quinn, 2018). Similar to Asian American student activists in the 1960s, such youth understand their own racial identities as connected with those of their Black, Latine, and Indigenous peers. Notably, Asian American youth often develop such understandings in community-based educational spaces, such as youth organizing programs, whereas many public schools attend little to fostering youths’ critical racial consciousness. Indeed, such programs are often oriented around critical pedagogical approaches that support youth in analyzing racial inequity and injustice (Kwon, 2013). To illustrate, Nguyen and Quinn (2018) and S. J. Lee et al. (2020) demonstrate how Southeast Asian youth affiliated with such programs learn to recognize how their own experiences with racism overlap with, and depart from, the experiences of their Black peers. Similar research reveals how Asian American youth critique and reject the model minority narrative as an expression of anti-Blackness as they participate in racial justice activism in solidarity with their Black, Latine, and Indigenous peers (Abad, 2021; Castillo & Debs, 2025). Together, this work emphasizes the possibilities of community-based educational spaces in shaping Asian American youths’ understanding of how White supremacy and anti-Blackness have long informed Asian American racialization; and how such youth come to recognize their racial identities as connected to the racial identities of their Black, Latine, and Indigenous counterparts.

Conceptual Framework: Frames for Making Sense of Race, Class, and Education

How Asian American youth define and understand their own racial identities in relation to other racial groups is connected to their understandings of how race and power shape educational opportunity amid widespread school segregation. To analyze how Asian American youth make sense of segregation across public high schools in NYC, I draw upon theoretical and empirical literature on how Asian Americans make sense of affirmative action in higher education. Conservative political groups such as Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) have strategically recruited Chinese American students to serve as plaintiffs in lawsuits challenging affirmative action (Garces & Poon, 2018), including the lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, which led to the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that race could no longer be considered in college admissions (Hartocollis, 2023). Notably, SFFA’s efforts to dismantle affirmative action enjoy robust support from the Pacific Legal Foundation, which has aided Asian Americans’ legal challenges to high school admissions reforms in NYC, Boston, and Fairfax County, Virginia (Saul, 2022). However, these efforts to shape public perceptions obscure the nuances underpinning Asian Americans’ positions. Indeed, surveys conducted between 2014 and 2022 reveal that Asian Americans broadly support affirmative action, although support varies by ethnic subgroup, with over 80% of Korean Americans supporting these policies in 2022, compared to less than 60% of Chinese Americans (J. Lee et al., 2022).

Asian Americans’ perspectives on affirmative action and other race-conscious policies are shaped by the distinct frames, or lenses, through which they observe and make sense of race, class, and educational opportunity (Bonilla-Silva, 2021; Poon et al., 2019; Warikoo, 2016). Most affirmative action opponents employ an ethnocentric nationalism frame, which explains the academic success among Asian Americans in terms of ethnic and cultural superiority (Poon et al., 2019). Notably, Poon et al. found that those employing this frame tended to identify as Chinese American, and they articulated their views specifically in terms of Chinese ethnic and cultural superiority. Similarly, a culture of poverty frame implies deficit views of Black and Latine students by suggesting that their cultural values, rather than structural racism, explains their underrepresentation at selective schools (Warikoo, 2016). These frames reinforce the model minority narrative in obscuring the systemic factors that contribute to Asian American success, such as immigration policies that prioritize highly educated professionals (J. Lee & Zhou, 2015) and teachers’ high expectations of Asian American students relative to other students of color ( J. Lee & Zhou, 2015; Okura, 2022). Together, these frames neglect to recognize how race and class inequities and systemic racism have shaped inequitable access to education over time.

Asian American opponents of affirmative action also invoke an abstract liberalism frame (Bonilla-Silva, 2021; Poon et al., 2019). They believe that systemic and institutional racism no longer exist in the United States and vaguely allude to “equal opportunity” from political liberalism, and “individualism” from economic liberalism, to justify their support for racial equality while rejecting race-conscious policies (Bonilla-Silva, 2021). Moreover, the abstract liberalism frame acknowledges economic inequality, but is color evasive (Annamma et al., 2017) in neglecting to recognize that systemic and institutional racism can shape economic inequalities (Bonilla-Silva, 2021; Poon et al., 2019). In turn, affirmative action critics employing the abstract liberalism frame explain the under-representation of Black and Latine students at elite universities primarily in terms of unequal access to resources (Warikoo, 2016).

In contrast, many Asian American supporters of affirmative action employ a conscious compromise frame (Poon et al., 2019), which positions diverse schools as educationally and socially beneficial to students of all racial identities. Those with a conscious compromise frame emphasize how diverse schools can help students to learn from people different from themselves, thus enhancing their own educational and personal development. However, this frame portrays diversity as an individual commodity, such that students and parents support affirmative action so long as it strikes a “diversity bargain” in facilitating a diverse campus for their own or their children’s educational benefit (Warikoo, 2016). Ultimately, the conscious compromise frame leaves unquestioned the structural barriers to college access disproportionately experienced among Black, Latine, and Indigenous students (Poon et al., 2019).

Whereas those with a conscious compromise frame emphasize the individual benefits of diverse schools, those employing a power analysis frame (Warikoo, 2016) position affirmative action policies as advancing a “systemic transformation” of educational institutions to benefit the public good (Poon et al., 2019, p. 220). Asian American affirmative action supporters with a power analysis frame recognize how anti-Blackness and White supremacy shape not only the historic and systemic exclusion of Black communities from higher education, but also the ways in which some Asian Americans experience racial privilege in schools and society ( C. J. Kim, 2000, 2023). This frame also acknowledges the intersection of structural racism and economic opportunity (Poon et al., 2019). Indeed, Poon et al. found that Asian American interview participants who supported affirmative action incorporated a critique of capitalism in their claims, recognizing that the revenue-generating incentives underpinning college admissions are intertwined with the racialized nature of who has access to higher education.

Much of the existing research on Asian Americans’ race and class frames focuses on the higher education context. Such scholarship demonstrates how Asian American stakeholders often employ multiple frames, sometimes in contradictory ways (Poon et al., 2019; Warikoo, 2016). A small, but growing, body of work explores Asian American adults’ sensemaking vis-à-vis race and merit in the context of competitive high school choice. In NYC, Fu and Blissett (2024) and Liu et al. (2023) found that Asian parents seeking to preserve test-based admission to specialized high schools leveraged narratives of Asian American exceptionalism. Robles (2007) and Quinn (2019) highlight similar dynamics in San Francisco, where Asian immigrant stakeholders framed efforts to expand Black enrollment at the elite Lowell High School as discriminating against Asian students. This study extends the scholarship on Asian American adult sensemaking by examining Asian American student perspectives on race, class, and educational access.

New York City Context

NYC comprises one of the largest and rapidly growing Asian American populations in the United States. (Hong, 2021). According to 2020 U.S. Census data, over 1.3 million documented and undocumented people of Asian descent reside in NYC, representing over 15% of the total city population. NYC’s Asian American population is also highly diverse, ethnically, linguistically, and socioeconomically. Around three-quarters of this population were born outside the United States, hailing from over 20 countries and speaking over 45 languages and dialects (NYC Department of City Planning, 2021). Reflecting national patterns (Kochnar & Cilluffo, 2018), Asian Americans in NYC have the widest income gap among all racial groups, and the most recent Asian immigrants are disproportionately poor and working class (Hong, 2021).

NYC’s high school choice system has exacerbated school segregation in recent decades (Cohen, 2021). All eighth grade students who wish to attend a public high school in NYC must engage in some form of citywide school choice, selecting from over 700 programs at 400 high schools, including numerous schools and programs that “screen” students based on their grades, standardized test scores, and other factors (Pérez, 2011; Sattin-Bajaj, 2015). While Black and Latine students comprise the majority of NYC’s public high school population, they are underrepresented at screened schools: In 2019, Black students comprised 35% of all high school students, but 29% of students attending screened high schools; and Latine students comprised 40% of all high school students, but 34% of those attending screened schools (School Diversity Advisory Group, 2019a). Black and Latine students are further underrepresented at the eight “specialized” high schools that admit students based on their performance on a single exam, the Specialized High School Admission Test (SHSAT). ¹ In 2019, Black and Latine students comprised 10% and 12%, respectively, of all specialized high school students. Meanwhile, Asian American students are overrepresented at screened and specialized high schools. In 2019, Asian Americans comprised 11% of the NYC public high school population, yet they formed 17% of the screened school population and 40% of the specialized high school population (School Diversity Advisory Group, 2019a). At the so-called “top three” specialized high schools, widely known as the most selective, Asian American students have consistently comprised more than half of the student body (e.g., New York State Education Department, 2023). Finally, while nearly three-quarters of all public high school students qualify for free lunch, screened and specialized high schools enroll lower shares of such students (School Diversity Advisory Group, 2019a).

Numerous factors constrain Black, Latine, and low-income students’ access to screened and specialized high schools. For example, a select number of highly resourced middle schools disproportionately serving White, Asian American, and middle-class and affluent students act as “feeder” schools to the most selective high schools (Sattin-Bajaj & Roda, 2020). These feeder schools effectively support students’ preparation for selective high school admission, including by offering advanced coursework. In contrast, middle schools primarily comprising Black, Latine, and low-income students often have limited advanced courses and few personnel guiding students through the high school application process (Pérez, 2011; Sattin-Bajaj, 2015). Moreover, the administratively complicated application process, alongside the sheer number of choices, privileges middle-class and affluent families who have the time and resources to research their children’s options and prepare them for tests and other selective criteria (Sattin-Bajaj & Roda, 2020). While many Asian American students in NYC hail from low-income families, they also have access to rich informational and relational resources vis-à-vis specialized high schools from their co-ethnic networks (Castillo, 2024).

Research Design and Methodology

Data Collection and Analysis

For this interview-based study, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 64 Asian American youth from the high school classes of 2021–2026 during the summer months (June–August) of 2022, 2023, and 2024. At the time of their interviews, the majority of participants were ages 15–20; two students were 14 and one student was 21 years old. I recruited interviewees via my existing contacts at five NYC-based youth organizations by sharing a flyer with program staff advertising the interview opportunity. Two of these organizations specifically serve Asian American and Asian immigrant youth. One of these groups invited me to attend their annual summer program each year to recruit participants in-person. This recruitment strategy proved to be particularly effective, as I recruited most participants through this organization. I also asked my existing organizational contacts to suggest other youth organizations in NYC, and several participants mentioned during interviews their involvement in other youth development and community organizing programs. Based on these suggestions, I emailed my flyer to an additional seven organizations, two of which specifically serve Asian immigrant youth, and the offices of four NYC Council Members whose districts encompass predominantly Asian immigrant neighborhoods. I recruited additional participants through snowball sampling, asking participants to share the interview opportunity with their peers. Given my own language abilities, I conducted all interviews in English, and I noted on my flyer that all participants must be comfortable conversing in English. I conducted most interviews virtually via Zoom after many interviewees requested this to accommodate their summer work, study, and travel schedules.

During semi-structured interviews, I asked two sets of questions. First, I asked participants to reflect on their high school experiences: how they selected their high schools, the nature of segregation or integration at their school, and to what extent they feel a sense of community and belonging. The second set of questions focused on interviewees’ views on segregation in the NYC public high school system broadly. I asked students to interpret charts illustrating demographic data across NYC’s screened and unscreened public high schools, and their views on what, if anything, policymakers should do to address these patterns (see the Appendix for the semi-structured interview guide). Interviews ranged in length from 60 to 90 minutes, and, with participants’ consent, I digitally recorded each interview for transcription. I compensated each participant with a $25 gift card. Following each interview, I wrote field notes to record initial reflections and analytic insights. To keep their identities confidential, I use pseudonyms for all interviewees and do not name their schools or the youth organizations with which they are affiliated.

Table 1 summarizes the self-reported demographic characteristics of all participants. I aimed to capture a diversity of Asian American identities and perspectives, rather than a representative sample of all Asian American sub-groups. To maximize confidentiality, in cases where there is a small number of students of a particular ethnic background, I report their broad regional ethnic identities (e.g., Southeast Asian) rather than country-specific ones (e.g., Filipino). Notably, around two-thirds of interviewees were second generation immigrants who were born in the United States to immigrant parents, and over 90% reported that their parents were born outside the United States. Additionally, nearly 80% shared that they qualified for free or reduced-price lunch at school. Finally, around three-quarters of the sample attended specialized (35.9%) or screened (37.5%) schools, while only one-quarter (26.6%) attended unscreened schools. Although the organizations from which I recruited participants confirmed that they serve a large population of students attending unscreened schools, it is possible that those attending specialized or screened schools especially perceived that they were well-suited to talking with a researcher and college professor, despite my efforts to build trust and rapport, as I describe below. Indeed, Phillippo (2019) found that high school students attending selective public schools were more likely to view themselves as smart relative to their peers attending nonselective schools.

Table 1

Interview Participants’ Self-Reported Demographic Characteristics (n = 64)

Ethnicity	Number of Participants	Percent of Sample
Chinese	27	42.2%
Other East Asian	3	4.7%
Bengali	16	25.0%
Other South Asian	7	10.9%
Southeast Asian	8	12.5%
Multi-racial or Multi-ethnic	3	4.7%
Place of Birth
United States	43	67.1%
Outside United States	21	32.8%
Parents’ Place of Birth
Both in United States	0	0
Both Outside United States	61	95.3%
One in US; One Outside US	3	4.7%
Parents’ Educational Attainment*
Less than High School	5	7.8%
High School	20	31.3%
Associate’s Degree	2	3.1%
Bachelor’s Degree	23	35.9%
Graduate Degree	9	14.1%
Unknown or Undisclosed	5	7.8%
Free or Reduced-Price Lunch Eligible
Yes	50	78.1%
No	8	12.5%
Undisclosed or Not Sure	6	9.4%
Gender Identity
Female	44	68.8%
Male	15	23.4%
Gender Fluid or Nonbinary	3	4.7%
Undisclosed	2	3.1%
Year of High School Graduation
2021–2022	9	14.1%
2023–2024	27	42.2%
2025–2026	28	43.8%
High School Type
Screened	23	35.9%
Specialized	24	37.5%
Unscreened	17	26.6%

*

When participants reported different levels of educational attainment for each parent, I include the higher level.

To analyze the data, I qualitatively coded all interview transcripts, employing deductive and inductive codes (Miles et al., 2014). Deductive codes were based on the literature on race and class frames (Bonilla-Silva, 2021; Poon et al., 2019; Warikoo, 2016). Inductive codes were empirically grounded in the data and included “marginalized at PWI” and “model minority reference.” I also prepared analytic memos throughout the data collection process to capture “emergent patterns, categories, themes, concepts, and assertions,” related to the youths’ sensemaking around race, class, and educational access (Miles et al., 2014, p. 96).

Researcher Positionality

I identify as a second-generation Filipina American woman, and I lived and worked in NYC, including as a public school teacher, for over a decade, although I did not live in NYC at the time of data collection. My experience teaching in majority-Black Title I public schools in NYC shaped my interest in understanding how youth of color experience and make sense of school segregation. I began each interview by explaining to participants that my research interests emerge from my Filipina American identity and personal ties to NYC, and a recognition that my own and other Asian American communities are overlooked among education policymakers and researchers (Ocampo, 2018). I found that sharing my personal background, experiences, and stake in the research helped to facilitate rapport and trust among participants, in turn encouraging them to speak openly.

Findings

Participants largely critiqued the racial and economic disparities across specialized, screened, and unscreened high schools. However, they used different frames in doing so, and some employed multiple frames. Most interviewees employed an abstract liberalism frame (Bonilla-Silva, 2021; Poon et al., 2019), using color evasive language to reason that economic inequities explain the under-representation of Black and Latine students at screened and specialized high schools (Annamma et al., 2017; Warikoo, 2016). Relatedly, many participants drew upon a culture of poverty frame to argue that the overrepresentation of Asian American students at specialized high schools stems from their immigrant parents’ unique cultural emphasis on educational achievement. This framing implied that the small shares of Black and Latine students at specialized high schools stems from cultural values among Black and Latine families that de-emphasize education. Some students employed a conscious compromise frame in critiquing segregation for undermining the individual benefits of diverse schools (Poon et al., 2019). Finally, only a small share of participants made sense of segregation in terms of a power analysis frame (Warikoo, 2016) that called for a systemic transformation of the school system to advance equity (Poon et al., 2019). These students appeared to have more precise language to name and analyze race, racism, and power, including how Asian Americans can experience both racial marginalization and privilege within NYC’s segregated and unequal school system.

Abstract Liberalism Frame

Whether they attended specialized, screened, or unscreened high schools, most interview participants employed an abstract liberalism frame in making sense of the racial and socioeconomic disparities among these high school types. Notably, when viewing data comparing the racial demographics across NYC’s public high schools (see Appendix), most participants specifically highlighted the overrepresentation of Asian American students, and underrepresentation of Black and Latine students, at specialized high schools. Olivia, an East Asian American senior at a screened school, explained this pattern as follows:

A lot of Asian parents, I guess, are more fortunate and successful in some ways that they can afford tutoring and being able to have the resources that they need, meaning tutoring, basically having a private tutor. . . . Maybe the other minorities, they're not able to have enough [of] those resources, meaning, buy these expensive [test preparation] books from Barnes and Noble, or be able to have one-on-one conversations [with tutors].

Firoz, a Bengali American junior at a specialized high school, similarly reasoned that Black and Latine families have fewer resources to pay for their children’s SHSAT tutoring:

Based on the statistics, I can tell that a lot of Latin American students and their parents, [and] a lot of Black students, aren’t getting the same opportunity to go to test prep and apply to get into these specialized high schools.

Laurie, a Southeast Asian junior at an unscreened school, also interpreted the dearth of Black and Latine students at specialized high schools in terms of resources for SHSAT test preparation: “I think it’s difficult for Black and Latine groups to . . . get into these [specialized high] schools because of their lack of resources and because of their economic circumstances.”

As these examples demonstrate, Olivia, Firoz, and Laurie recognized racial disparities in access to SHSAT preparation, yet they made sense of such disparities primarily in terms of economic inequities. Their color evasive interpretations (Annamma et al., 2017) neglected to acknowledge how systemic racial inequities reinforce unequal access to educational resources (Rothstein, 2017; Sharkey, 2013). Indeed, researchers have argued that racially segregated neighborhoods shape racially disparate access to private tutoring and test preparation centers, which are concentrated in Asian immigrant neighborhoods (E. Kim et al., 2024; J. Lee & Zhou, 2015; Yin, 2017). In turn, Asian American students—including those from poor families—are more likely than their Black and Latine peers to learn about specialized high schools and the SHSAT (Castillo, 2024).

When asked what, if anything, policymakers should do to remedy the racial disparities across selective and nonselective high schools, most students again drew on an abstract liberalism frame, arguing that the NYC Department of Education (DOE) ought to equalize opportunities for SHSAT preparation by investing in free tutoring programs. Firoz explained, “I feel like increasing funding for SHSAT programs or test prep programs in general would be a great idea.” Bengali American Priya, a senior at a screened high school, shared a similar perspective. Critiquing those advocating to expand Black and Latine access to specialized high schools by eliminating the SHSAT (Public Counsel, 2024; Teens Take Charge, 2020), Priya remarked:

There should be something else done instead of the test being taken away. Maybe there should be more funding where Black and Latine students are given more tutoring or they’re let known [sic] about the test and how to get in.

Priya and Firoz’s comments illustrate a common perspective among interviewees employing an abstract liberalism frame. These students supported the idea of diversifying specialized high schools, but they argued that doing so required addressing economic inequalities by offering individual support in the form of free SHSAT tutoring. In doing so, they left unquestioned the SHSAT itself, and test-based admission more broadly, illustrating the appeal and durability of meritocratic ideology (Au, 2016; Khan, 2011; Kolluri, 2025). However, researchers have consistently demonstrated how standardized tests have historically served to systematically exclude students of color from elite institutions (Au, 2010; Schneider, 2017). In largely accepting the color evasive meritocratic logics underpinning test-based admission, interviewees employing an abstract liberalism frame appeared to have minimal analytic tools and language to make sense of the intersection among race, class, and educational access.

Culture of Poverty Frame

Given their largely socioeconomic explanations for the overrepresentation of Asian American students, and underrepresentation of Black and Latine students, at specialized high schools, many interviewees were surprised to see a chart depicting the nearly identical poverty rates for Black and Asian American children in NYC (see Appendix). When asked to make sense of this information, numerous participants employed a culture of poverty frame, drawing on dominant racial stereotypes to explicitly or implicitly argue that Asian American families have a stronger cultural orientation toward education relative to Black families. This pattern illustrates the power of what Wallace (2023) calls a “culture trap,” where cultural explanations obscure the more complex factors shaping educational opportunity and achievement.

For example, Tiffany, a Chinese American senior at a specialized high school, made a keen observation about segregation and educational resource disparities when remarking that test preparation centers are concentrated in NYC’s Chinatowns. Yet, when I asked why she thought this was the case, she did not elaborate on the connection between residential segregation and educational opportunity, but, rather, drew on a culture of poverty frame: “I don’t know, maybe a different set of priorities as a cultural group. I know with my community, it’s very, very—you know, it’s very focused on academics, I think more so than any other cultural group probably.” Relatedly, Elaine, a Chinese American junior at a screened high school, remarked that “Asians do tend to put whatever money they have to test prep,” and employed a culture of poverty frame when comparing her own experience to her perception of her Black friends’ experiences: “Their parents are very—I guess, their top priority isn't, ‘Oh, you have to be in a specialized high school.’ It would be, ‘Oh, what vacation should we go on?’” Here, Tiffany and Elaine’s comments reveal their assumption that the underrepresentation of Black students at specialized high schools stems from Black families’ minimal emphasis on education.

Jonathan, a Chinese American who had recently graduated from an unscreened high school at the time of our interview, similarly expressed a culture of poverty frame when making sense of specialized high schools’ demographic data:

Our cultures are different from Black and Latine cultures, not to be, how should I say, like, discriminatory, but it’s like, from what I’ve seen, at least the cultures are very different for Asians and Whites. . . . Everyone talks about how specialized high schools have so little diversity, but I guess to me it makes sense because of this, it’s, like, the cultural differences.

Interestingly, Jonathan shared that, as a middle school student, he “didn’t think to take the SHSAT,” because “all I cared about was just messing around, like, playing around, so I didn’t really care about the academic stuff.” Despite his own professed indifference toward academic achievement, he nevertheless emphasized his perception that racialized access to specialized high schools is rooted in racial groups’ distinct cultural orientations toward education.

Numerous participants connected an emphasis on educational achievement to many Asian parents’ immigrant backgrounds. For example, Devika, a Bengali American junior at a screened high school, described how her immigrant parents perceived specialized high schools as “a status symbol for their kids” and thought these schools “would provide us with the best education.” She went on to claim that her parents’ view is common among Asian immigrants: “I think Asians always have prioritized education. I feel like that’s the reason why there are so many Asians in specialized high schools versus Blacks.” Similarly, in addition to employing the abstract liberalism frame, as described above, Laurie drew on the culture of poverty frame to argue:

I kind of think Asian people are more willing to spend money for their kids or next generation to do better because a lot of Asian people, they immigrate to the U.S. for their kids and the next generations to have a better opportunity and chance. So, even though they might be living in poverty or not doing too well financially, they still, nonetheless, choose to keep investing money into their kids.

As Laurie and Devika’s remarks illustrate, interviewees employing a culture of poverty frame appeared not to recognize the complex social factors, beyond simply their immigrant backgrounds, underpinning many Asian parents’ emphasis on their children’s admission to selective schools. Indeed, J. Lee and Zhou (2015) argue that Asian immigrant parents’ orientation toward education is shaped by multiple interrelated factors, including their “ethnic capital,” or the information and resources regarding schools to which they have access via their ethnic social networks; their relatively higher levels of educational attainment compared to other immigrant groups; and their desire to protect their children from potential racial discrimination. Together, these factors shape many Asian immigrant parents’ emphasis on their children’s accumulation of elite academic credentials (Dhingra, 2020; Louie, 2004; Warikoo, 2022). Additionally, scholars point out that high-stakes admissions exams, such as the SHSAT, are familiar to many Asian immigrants, who may hail from countries in East and South Asia where such exams are common (J. Lee & Zhou, 2015; Louie, 2004). However, those employing a culture of poverty frame neglected to consider these factors when suggesting that Asian immigrant parents value education more so than other parents of color. Additionally, in suggesting a uniform cultural orientation toward education among all Asian Americans, youth expressing a culture of poverty frame overlooked the experiences of Asian Americans who struggle academically, including many Southeast Asian American students (S. J. Lee et al., 2017; Ngo, 2009).

Moreover, interviewees with a culture of poverty frame seemed unaware of the long history of Black, Indigenous, and Latin American immigrant parents’ commitments to attaining a high-quality education for their children in the face of systemic barriers to access (Anderson, 1988; Martinez-Cola, 2022; Strum, 2010). Indeed, the culture of poverty frame implies that Black, Latine, and Indigenous communities are personally at fault for not gaining admission to selective high schools, and reinforces the model minority narrative’s anti-Black underpinnings (S. J. Lee, 2009; Yi et al., 2020). Although it was beyond the scope of this study to examine what interviewees were and were not learning in school about race, racism, and White supremacy, their responses suggest little to no meaningful instruction on these topics. Indeed, the NYC DOE has only recently begun to implement ethnic studies curricula, piloting Asian American Studies in 2022 and launching Black Studies in 2024 (Bellamy-Walker, 2022; Whitmire, 2024). Against this backdrop, participants largely relied on the culture of poverty frame alongside the abstract liberalism frame, revealing their minimal analytic tools for making sense of race, racism, and the structural barriers to educational opportunity.

Conscious Compromise Frame

Interviewees employing a conscious compromise frame believed that diverse learning environments socially benefit all students by exposing them to people different from themselves, and they critiqued the racial disparities across specialized, screened, and unscreened high schools as undermining these benefits. Although they viewed segregation as a problem, they “[did] not present a bold challenge to the systemic reproduction of inequalities that specifically affects underrepresented students of color” (Poon et al., 2019, p. 219). In this way, participants with a conscious compromise frame had similar perspectives to those who support affirmative action as striking an ideal “diversity bargain” by benefiting all students (Warikoo, 2016).

For example, when asked to what extent she views the disparities across specialized, screened, and unscreened schools as something policymakers should address, Stella, a Chinese American junior at a specialized high school, remarked:

It’s definitely an issue that needs to be addressed. I think every high school should be fairly diverse. It shouldn’t just be a majority of one group or a majority of a different group. It should be mixed because that’s how real life is. When you step into the real world, when you step into college, there are going to be so many people that you meet out there. And I think high school should prepare you for that.

In arguing that diverse schools prepare students for “real life,” Stella points to what she perceives as the social benefit of diversity. Similarly, Firoz viewed the racial disparities across high school types as “a major problem” and, as described above, he primarily drew on an abstract liberalism frame to make sense of it. Additionally, he employed a conscious compromise frame to call for greater racial diversity, arguing that “diversity and being open minded towards new cultures, new experiences, and new people is what drives a country forward.” In emphasizing the social benefits of diverse schools for all students, Stella and Firoz’s views were color evasive (Annamma et al., 2017) and lacked an analysis of how school integration policies can remedy the systematic exclusion of Black, Latine, and poor students from specialized and screened schools.

Whereas their peers with an abstract liberalism frame favored expanding individual supports such as free SHSAT tutoring, participants with a conscious compromise frame called for more system-wide reforms to enhance diversity at selective schools. However, in doing so, they primarily argued that such initiatives would promote social connections among students of different racial backgrounds. For instance, Elaine, a Chinese American junior at a screened school, agreed with proposals to eliminate the SHSAT and other academic screens to expand Black and Latine access to selective schools: “I feel like then the schools would have a lot of diversity. People would get to just be with each other equally. Some schools, some groups of students are not better than another and everyone can just get along.” Although advocates of eliminating screens explicitly point to how such a reform would repair past and ongoing racialized harms (Public Counsel, 2024; Teens Take Charge, 2020), Elaine did not make such a connection. Rather, drawing on a conscious compromise frame, she supported the elimination of screens to facilitate diverse schools where all students would “just get along.” Notably, Elaine’s perspectives demonstrate her use of multiple and contradictory frames, as she also employed a culture of poverty frame to suggest that Black families undervalue education, as described above.

Similarly, Rosalie, a Chinese American junior at a screened school, expressed support for the NYC DOE’s 2018 decision to expand the number of seats in the Discovery Program, which enables low-income students who score just below the SHSAT cutoff score to enroll in a specialized high school upon successful completion of a summer academic program. Rosalie critiqued Asian immigrant parents who argued that the expansion of the Discovery Program hurt their children’s chances to be admitted to a specialized high school. When asked what she would say to Asian immigrant parents who protested the Discovery expansion, Rosalie replied,

I would say that it does not harm your children and that it does benefit all cultures and ethnic groups, and [to] see it as an opportunity to just make friends with everyone. And it’s a way to connect with other people.

Although Rosalie supported this reform’s aim to facilitate Black and Latine access to specialized high schools, she neglected to recognize it as a remedy to these students’ systematic exclusion from academically selective institutions, historically and in the present day. Instead, her conscious compromise frame led her to view the Discovery Program as supporting all students, regardless of racial background—particularly their ability to socialize with people different from themselves. In sum, although students such as Stella, Elaine, Firoz, and Rosalie supported reforms aimed at remedying segregation, their conscious compromise frame “privileges the accumulation of individual educational benefits and capital through diversity,” rather than enabling them to critique academic screens as reinforcing racial and socioeconomic barriers to elite educational access (Poon et al., 2019, p. 220).

Power Analysis Frame

In contrast to those with a conscious compromise frame, participants expressing a power analysis frame recognized the racial and socioeconomic disparities across specialized, screened, and unscreened schools as intertwined with systemic and racialized barriers to educational opportunity. However, among the 64 interview participants, only 10 employed a power analysis frame. Unlike their peers employing other frames, interviewees with a power analysis frame shared several key experiences that appear to have shaped their critical understanding and analysis of race, class, and educational opportunity. Many such students had more extensive experience, including leadership roles, with community-based educational spaces, highlighting how such contexts can support youths’ racial consciousness development where public schools often fall short of doing so (Baldridge et al., 2017). Additionally, some such students shared experiences of racial marginalization at their predominantly White schools, and recognized these experiences as both similar to, and different from, the racism their Black and Latine peers experience. Finally, several were among the oldest participants in the sample, having completed 1 year of college at the time of data collection. These experiences seem to have equipped such students with the language and analytic tools to make sense of race, power, and Asian American identity.

For example, Bengali American Taj had participated in a youth racial justice organization that advocated for integrated schools, an experience that helped them to connect Asian American overrepresentation at specialized high schools to the NYC DOE’s underinvestment in public schools serving communities of color. Taj attended a specialized high school located an hour away from their home, having assumed that doing so was necessary for attaining a quality education and admission to an elite college. However, over the years, Taj came to understand the inequity of this situation:

No kid wants to spend an hour every day each way on the train, right, but then there’s this feeling of like, ok, you have to do this . . . and it was often the Asian kids who did this, who had the longest commutes, and the Black and Brown kids, also. . . . Our neighborhood schools should be well resourced enough that we feel good to go to them. . . . The New York City school system was set up so that my parents felt like they had no choice but to send me to [a specialized high] school for a quality education.

Here, Taj demonstrates a keen awareness and critique of the racialized structure of educational opportunity. Unlike those who employed the individualized explanations of immigrant industriousness or access to resources to explain the overrepresentation of Asian Americans at specialized high schools, Taj pointed to NYC’s minimal investment in public schools serving communities of color as driving many Asian Americans’ belief that specialized high schools are their only viable option for a quality education.

Randy, a multiethnic Southeast Asian graduate of a screened high school, highlighted a related factor underpinning the dearth of Black and Latine students at specialized and screened high schools: poorly funded middle schools located in communities of color. Randy grew up in a predominantly Southeast Asian and Latine immigrant neighborhood in Queens, and he described his middle school as having “lost a quarter of a million” while he was a student there. As such, the school had few resources to support students’ academic preparation for a selective high school, beyond a very limited honors program, which, Randy explained, “was the only reason I was honestly able to get credible [high] school choices.” Randy’s recognition of the racialized geography of educational opportunity reflects research documenting how many of the most selective, well-resourced, and high-performing schools in NYC are located in predominantly White and affluent neighborhoods (Sattin-Bajaj & Roda, 2020). His deep understanding of systemic inequities likely stems from his experience as a youth organizer working on local and state issues related to public education, housing, and food insecurity.

Students employing a power analysis frame also critiqued the model minority narrative for suggesting that Asian Americans are more deserving of an elite education than other people of color. Jasmine, a Southeast Asian alumna of a screened high school who was involved with two organizations serving Asian immigrant youth, explained her perception that the model minority myth privileged her over her Black and Latine peers:

I feel like that—what’s the word?—impression that people have about me, just because of how I look, just because of how I speak or just because of the things I’ve done, already gives me a leg up over more qualified students who are of a darker skin tone than me.

Anisha, a Bengali American alumna of a screened school who held a leadership role in an Asian American youth development organization, shared a similar perspective. She explained:

A lot of the time, counselors or other teachers and things like that, they’ll be like, oh, you’re Asian, you must be smart, you must want to go here, you must want to do this. You must be a STEM major; here are some resources for you.

While participants employing an abstract liberalism frame claimed that economic inequities explain disparate access to selective schools, Anisha explicitly pointed to the racialized nature of educational resource distribution. She recognized that

[Black communities] don’t get access to [resources] the same way that other groups do because of marginalization and because of targeting. It’ll go to other POC groups but it won’t go to the Black community because of the perception and the racism that is embedded within the system.

Together, Jasmine and Anisha’s perspectives reflect research illustrating how Asian Americans often experience “stereotype promise,” or assumptions about their abilities that advantage them in educational and workplace contexts (J. Lee & Zhou, 2015; Okura, 2022). Unlike their peers employing abstract liberalism or culture of poverty frames, Jasmine and Anisha did not point to individuals’ resources or cultural orientations to explain their educational access. Rather, they recognized how the overrepresentation of Asian American students at specialized and screened schools can be explained by how Asian Americans, including those from poor and working-class backgrounds, experience racial privilege over other people of color, especially Black people ( C. J. Kim, 2023).

Interviewees with a power analysis frame also commonly shared experiences of racial marginalization or microaggressions at predominantly White schools. For example, Randy earned a full scholarship to attend a prestigious private high school, yet upon matriculating, he recalled, “I was called a ‘tan coupon’ when I first entered there during orientation because I was one of the only Asian males, let alone Southeast Asian males,” as well as one of a handful on a full scholarship. Following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, Randy critiqued as “performative” the school’s social media post expressing solidarity with Black and Brown students, and he subsequently organized a protest. In response, the school revoked his scholarship, and Randy transferred to the screened high school from which he ultimately graduated. Despite an academic record that garnered him a coveted scholarship, Randy’s outspoken critique of his school did not align with racialized expectations of a quiet and submissive model minority. As a result, he was effectively expelled from the school, illustrating the “ideological Blackening” that many Asian American students experience when they do not conform to model minority behavior (S. J. Lee et al., 2017). For Randy and others with a power analysis frame, experiencing racism at school shaped their understanding of how Asian Americans can never access the racial privileges of Whiteness, even as they are racialized as model minorities.

When asked what, if anything, policymakers should do to remedy disparities in the racial and socioeconomic composition of selective high schools, students employing a power analysis frame called for structural changes that would facilitate the “systemic transformation” of public education (Poon et al., 2019). For example, Jasper, a Southeast Asian alumnus of a specialized high school, called for eliminating all screens, not only at the high school level, but also, test-based gifted and talented programs at the elementary level. In fact, Jasper had been involved with a youth racial justice organization that advocated for the elimination of academic screens. Alongside removing screens, Jasper called on policymakers “to implement new support systems . . . like implicit bias and affinity spaces,” so that students of color “can learn more about themselves and learn more about what they want from their education,” rather than assuming that a screened or specialized high school is their best option. Taj offered a more ambitious policy proposal, arguing, “I really do want to shut these [specialized high] schools down.” Rather than pouring resources into the specialized high school system, Taj called for policymakers to invest in neighborhood public schools, especially those in poor communities and communities of color. Together, these youth and others who employed a power analysis frame demonstrated a nuanced critique of how race and racism shape educational opportunity, and they offered policy ideas for facilitating transformative change.

Discussion and Implications

This analysis revealed the diversity of perspectives among Asian American youth vis-à-vis public high school segregation in NYC. Nearly all participants agreed that the stark levels of racial and socioeconomic segregation across specialized, screened, and unscreened high schools is problematic. However, interviewees diverged in the frames with which they made sense of the problem and imagined possible remedies. Most youth employed color evasive frames that drew on harmful racial stereotypes, revealing their minimal analytic tools for identifying and critiquing the ways that systemic and institutional racism can play out in educational access. Some participants employed a conscious compromise frame in emphasizing how expanding Black and Latine access to selective schools would socially benefit students of all racial backgrounds. Notably, some participants drew on a combination of the abstract liberalism, culture of poverty, and conscious compromise frames in making sense of segregation. In contrast, fewer interviewees employed a power analysis frame, illustrating stronger analytic tools and language for critiquing how residential segregation alongside selective admissions processes have systematically excluded Black and Latine students from screened and specialized high schools. Those with a power analysis frame called for reforms that would remedy the systemic barriers to access facing Black and Latine students, in turn radically transforming high school admissions in NYC. Moreover, interviewees with a power analysis frame were better able to articulate how being racialized as model minorities advantaged them over their Black and Latine peers, in turn enhancing their access to selective schools, even as they are excluded from the racial privileges of Whiteness.

Participants’ largely uncritical acceptance of color evasive meritocratic ideology speaks to the ubiquity of this framework, within many Asian immigrant communities (Fu & Blissett, 2024; Liu et al., 2023) and schools and society more broadly (Au, 2016; Khan, 2011; Kolluri, 2025). Amid little to no formal in-school instruction on race and identity, perhaps it is no surprise that most participants had not learned to question these ideas and develop a more critical racial consciousness. Indeed, as described above, NYC public schools have only recently begun to incorporate ethnic studies curricula (Bellamy-Walker, 2022; Whitmire, 2024). However, amid the politically contested nature of ethnic studies nationally (Chang, 2022), it remains to be seen to what extent NYC public schools can effectively implement such curricula.

Notably, many participants demonstrating a power analysis frame had more extensive experience learning about race, racism, and Asian American identity outside the public school context. Reflecting research on how community-based educational spaces can serve as “counterspaces” where youth of color learn to recognize, analyze, and interrogate systemic racism and other forms of injustice (Baldridge et al., 2017), youth employing a power analysis frame had at least 1 year of experience at a youth development organization focused on racial and social justice, including groups explicitly oriented around Asian American issues. Moreover, many held leadership roles at such organizations. For example, several led efforts to advocate for marginalized Asian Americans such as English learners. Others were involved in interracial youth coalitions advocating for integrated schools. And some students organized on issues outside of education impacting Asian immigrant communities, such as housing and food insecurity. These students’ involvement in community-based organizations appear to have shaped their critical racial consciousness and understanding of the racialized and systemic barriers to quality education. Additionally, these youths’ experiences reflect research highlighting how community-based organizations can nurture Asian American students’ commitment to interracial solidarity (Abad, 2021; S. J. Lee et al., 2020; Nguyen & Quinn, 2018).

Notably, participants employing abstract liberalism, culture of poverty, and conscious compromise frames seemed interested in better understanding race and racism, and specifically Asian American racial identity. Indeed, as described above, I recruited most interview participants in-person during an Asian American youth development organization’s annual weeklong summer program. At this program, students attended workshops on topics such as the model minority narrative and the history of anti-Asian racism, facilitated by the organization’s youth leaders. However, these students’ participation in the summer program was likely a starting point in their education on race and racism. Indeed, compared to their peers exhibiting a power analysis frame, they appeared to have an underdeveloped understanding of systemic racism and the ways that Asian Americans can experience racial privilege relative to other people of color (C. J. Kim, 2023).

However, as Kwon (2013) points out, even as nonprofit community-based organizations can facilitate Asian American youths’ recognition of racial injustice and advocacy for transformative change, such programs can also reproduce neoliberal discourses of individual empowerment at the expense of collective care. Indeed, Kwon argues that such organizations are situated within, and benefit from, a political landscape characterized by the dismantling of the welfare state and the rise of privately funded nonprofits as providers of essential social services for marginalized youth. Thus, given these contradictions, community-based youth organizations may reify the logics their youth learn to critique.

Relatedly, findings extend Phillippo’s (2019) research on how competitive high school choice promotes “civic individualism,” wherein youth learn to “protect their own schooling rather than to promote opportunity for everyone” (p. 124). Phillippo argues that navigating competitive school choice can serve as an informal civic learning experience where students make sense of their place in relation to broader society. In Chicago, she found that students learned to vie for their own educational advancement and perceived high-quality public schooling as something to be earned. Additionally, civic individualism led youth to leave unquestioned the color evasive meritocratic logics underpinning competitive school choice, and how these logics serve to justify the systematic exclusion of Black, Latine, and poor students from selective schools. My findings similarly demonstrate that most participants, apart from those employing a power analysis frame, largely viewed public education as an individual commodity, rather than a public good (Labaree, 1997). The abstract liberalism and culture of poverty frames especially shaped participants’ belief that specialized high school admission reflects individual merit and success, while failure to gain admission to these selective institutions reflects personal or familial shortcomings. Although they critiqued the racial disparities across specialized, screened, and unscreened high schools, most participants proposed policy remedies, such as expanding free tutoring, that would largely maintain the individualistic and competitive nature of high school access.

In capturing the perspectives of youth identifying with a range of Asian ethnic backgrounds, this project contributes to research that challenges the homogenous racialization of Asian Americans (S. J. Lee et al., 2017). Future research can delve deeper into how, if at all, Asian American youths’ ethnic and other intersectional identities may shape their perspectives on race, segregation, and educational opportunity. Additionally, as students attending selective schools formed the majority of this study’s sample, future scholarship should center the perspectives of Asian American students at NYC’s unscreened schools, who remain overlooked in dominant narratives emphasizing the overrepresentation of Asian Americans in the city’s specialized high schools (e.g., Shapiro & Lai, 2019). Moreover, because most participants identified as first- or second-generation immigrants, future research should examine the race and class frames of third-generation Asian Americans and beyond, and how, if at all, their extended families’ longevity in the United States may shape their frames. Although findings highlight the important role community-based organizations can play in fostering youths’ race and class frames, directly observing interview participants’ involvement in such organizations, and how such organizations fostered their learning, was outside the scope of this study. Thus, future research can more directly examine Asian American youth development organizations, particularly their organizational routines and practices, and the possibilities and limitations of such spaces for supporting the development of youths’ understandings of race and segregation.

Finally, findings hold implications for the racial politics surrounding affirmative action in higher education. Indeed, how today’s Asian American youth understand race and educational opportunity has direct implications for the future of affirmative action. As I describe above, historically, most Asian Americans have supported affirmative action, despite conservative efforts to frame Asian Americans as uniformly opposed to this policy (Garces & Poon, 2018). Yet, ongoing Asian American support of affirmative action is not guaranteed. Indeed, numerous Asian American advocacy groups supported Students for Fair Admissions’ legal challenge to affirmative action, leveraging color evasive meritocratic logics in doing so ( E. Park et al., 2024). Moreover, President Trump’s growing support among Asian American voters, alongside Black and Latine voters, signals an increasingly conservative shift among this constituency (Bender et al., 2024). My findings indicate that maintaining and increasing Asian American support for affirmative action will require supporting young Asian Americans in recognizing and rejecting the harmful racial stereotypes that have long been used to justify racialized access to high-quality education. Thus, findings further underscore the importance of broadening access to educational spaces, both in and out of school, that meaningfully foster the development of Asian American youths’ critical racial consciousness and commitment to education as a collective good.