Differential Racialization of Filipino College Students

Abstract

Filipino college students report more negative experiences on their campuses than other Asian groups in qualitative studies, but such variation is obscured in quantitative research combining all Asian students together. Little is known about Filipino American racialization in higher education. Theories of racial liminality and racial hierarchies suggest that Filipino student’s interpersonal racialized experiences will differ from those of White and Asian students while being more similar to those of Black and Latinx students. Using a large survey of early college undergraduates, we examine Filipino students’ reports of racial microaggressions compared with other racial groups. We run ordered logit regression to predict student exposure to peer, staff, and faculty microaggressions, net of controls. We find Filipino students are significantly more likely than White and Asian students to report experiencing racial microaggressions from both student peers and campus staff. Filipino students also reported significantly more faculty microaggressions than White (but not Asian) students. Black students reported significantly more student microaggressions than any other racial group but were otherwise not significantly different from Filipino students. Compared with Latinx students, Filipino students reported significantly more staff and faculty microaggressions, but similar rates of student microaggressions. We discuss theoretical and practical implications.