The ChallengeThe ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines play a guiding role in foreign language teaching, testing, curriculum design, and textbook development. However, can the difficulty hierarchy posited by descriptors in the Guidelines be verified empirically? How to verify it by scaling teachers' collective perceptions of descriptor difficulty?

Pursuing equity and diversity on internationalized higher education campuses has become an urgent agenda. Chinese Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) do not always have smooth experiences with this internationalization. While they are often overlooked in racial discussion in the U.S., they cannot escape the racial and cultural inequalities in the same context. Using Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems (2005) and Lee’s neo-racism (2020) as analytical lenses, this study revealed the racial and cultural challenges experienced by 21 Chinese at micro-, meso-, exo-, macro-, and chrono-levels. The study helps educators charged with the complexity of Chinese GTAs’ plights by considering contextual influences using critical concepts (e.g., neo-racism). This study is significant in addressing unique equity and diversity issues in globalized higher education using both phenomenological and critical perspectives. Finally, we call for actions on the part of higher education institutions to create more equitable and caring systems to improve all students’ academic and sociocultural experiences.