3  Filipino Duoethnography Race in the Classroom

Negotiating Racialized Identities

Our racialized bodies occupy a space of marginality in the university. As of 2016, racialized people such as Indigenous and non-white persons compose about 21 percent of all university teachers in Canada (CAUT 2018). Of this group, Filipinos represent less than 1 percent, or about 0.03 percent of university teachers and 0.08 percent of college instructors in the country (CAUT 2018). As noted in Coloma et al. (2012), Glenda was the only tenured Filipino professor for some time in the province of Alberta. In Lethbridge, Glenda remains the only first-generation Filipino academic teaching at the university. Her first years teaching classes were perhaps the most deeply disturbing, as an all-white student enrolment first made manifest her race, relegating her instruction to second place. As the years went by, a handful of non-white students started taking her classes. In contrast, Roxanna came at a time when the university began moving toward equity services, and the city became famous as the destination hub of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees and for its community sponsorships of Syrian refugees.4

Our position of marginality is where, according to hooks (1984, vii), “we developed a particular way of seeing reality.” We are both insiders and outsiders of the university: insiders because of our assigned academic roles but outsiders as Filipinos with disturbing invisibility (Coloma et al. 2012). Filipinos are mainly in the service economy, such as health care, caregiving, cleaning, food, customer attendance, and the manufacturing sectors in Canada (Laquian 2008). Very few are in the academy. When we do appear in the halls of the university as teachers or teaching assistants, our bodies become markers of our ethnic identity as Filipinos. Again, we are Filipinos first and teachers second; we embody a hierarchy within.

Identity is a contentious mask of labels (Appiah 2018). It may refer to our belonging to a social group with shared normative values and traditions and perhaps our sense of who we are, among other conceptualizations. But what we do understand is that our lives, past and present, are riddled with “identity politics” (Fukuyama 2019) that pit one group against another.

Our experiences exemplify Edward Said’s argument that “intellectuals are individuals with a vocation for the art of representing [a standpoint of some kind], whether that is talking, writing, teaching, appearing on television [. . .] and that is publicly recognizable and involves both commitment and risk, boldness and vulnerability” (1996, 12–13). As Filipino expatriates, our academic journeys or lived experiences embody the “intellectuals as exiles” who are at the margins of “privilege, power, honor” (Said 1993, 117). With our intersecting identities and markers of difference (e.g., race, gender, citizenship) navigating in different structures of power and privilege in predominantly white spaces, we have become unsettled and are unsettling others as we demonstrate difference as both a process and outcomes. These realities have made us think in a broader context while adopting the local-global approach in our teaching and scholarship, even our ways of living. Hence it is necessary for us to invent or reimagine our thoughts and actions from a different standpoint.

Our identities construct particular stereotypes and assumptions about our abilities and our place in society. At universities in Canada, particularly in Lethbridge, a Filipino academic like Glenda is uncommon. Knowingly, the place of Filipinos is constructed by stereotypes in popular media and their visible presence in particular sectors. For example, in Lethbridge, where Filipinos are disproportionately visible working in seniors’ homes, their presence in the academy appears as a contradiction to many. When Glenda steps outside the university campus, often the questions posed relate to Filipino caregivers. On one occasion, when asked “Who is your employer?” she replied, “I work in the university to clean the minds of students!”

In our teaching experiences, the classroom is akin to what Razack (2018, 113) notes as an experience of “place becom[ing] race.” How, then, do we negotiate our identity as Filipinos in a place mostly occupied by white people? We count on three dimensions of our identities: education, family, and culture.

Managing Racism in the Classroom

Racism is a “social disease” (Stevens 2019) that has been left uncured for ages and remains at the core of human interactions primarily based on phenotype, ethnicity, and other markers of difference. It plagues our social institutions and our practices, whether subtly or overtly. As racialized Filipinos in Canada, our physical markers of identity include brown skin and our accent; however, these are not homogeneous classifiers, as there are white-skinned Filipinos known as mestizos. We are of the brown Malay race, seemingly related to the Indigenous inhabitants of Southeast Asian islands. Our compatriot mestizos are, then, the product of interracial relations under colonialism. Because of our marked racial difference in the classroom, at times, we face overt racism. During her first day as a teaching assistant at the university and unsure of where to fix the sound from the attached computer system in the classroom to play a video documentary, a white female student sitting in front of Roxanna blatantly expressed, “Don’t help her. Leave her alone.” We find that white students tend to readily assert themselves in expressing negative or blunt ideas in front of us, contrary to the caution and respect they would have given to a white instructor or professor.

Physical differences coupled with our strange accents are points to ponder when we face racism in a white classroom, both to ourselves and to our non-white students. Covert acts of microaggression include eye-rolling when students of colour talk and purposely being inattentive or preoccupied when discussions take place. We both experience these types of students in our classes. In one case, when students were called on to participate in a discussion, a white male student in Glenda’s class refused to answer, simply saying, “Don’t have to talk.” In another class, a student declared the right to sit anywhere when requested to occupy the lower seats in a huge classroom with no microphone. Faculty of colour “experience microaggressions in the way students’ challenge their authority and knowledge due to their race and/or gender” (Dancy and Gaetane 2014, 355). Some time ago, another male student who was disappointed with his mark on a written assignment boldly told Glenda, “This will affect your student evaluations.”

How, then, do we manage racism in the classroom when the attack is directed at us as instructors or a collective embodiment of coloured students? Everyday racism is embedded in practices that underscore the power relations between groups (Essed 1991). In practice, we manage in different ways depending on the situation. But we do it mainly in two ways: counteraction and graduated silence. Counteraction means that we respond to each direct and obvious racist statement to provide an alternative narrative right away, upon impact; in this way, passive students also get to be part of the dialogue. Glenda finds this effective but unbearably painful in her heart to have to do in the twenty-first century. Roxanna tends to ignore covert acts of microaggression in class and finds ways to strategize, assessing how to respond, especially noting the rights-based approach in her sessions. In some instances, Glenda applies a form of graduated silence wherein students’ racist overtones in discussions are silently noted followed by an explosive response.

Our approach to participatory learning is also beneficial in handling racism in the classroom. Sometimes we do not have to offer alternative views, as the students themselves become our voice of reason. When progressive or enlightened students have their voices heard, they do make our day. What comes after is a feeling of collective relief—that our world could be better for all. Continuous engagement with critical materials using anti-racist frameworks comes within the purview of the discipline, and we feel strongly connected with its delivery. Empowerment through learning alternative discourses is not only for the students but also for us as facilitators of knowledge production.

Bias in Student Evaluations

Student evaluations have been ruled as the primary performance indicator of university teachers for a long time; they are deemed crucial for tenure and promotion. In November 2016, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) approved a policy statement on the “use of student opinion surveys” that “do not measure teaching effectiveness” and are laden with “prejudices to the disadvantage of equity-seeking groups” (CAUT 2016). In 2018, the arbitration ruling involving Ryerson University in Ontario set the precedent of “student evaluations of teaching [. . .] not [to be] used to measure teaching effectiveness for promotion or tenure” (Farr 2018). Before this ruling, student evaluations were noted for their bias against women, racialized faculty, faculty with physical challenges, non-heterosexual faculty, and even other disciplines (Chisadza 2019; Flaherty 2019). The assumption is that good student evaluations are indicative of good teaching and effective teaching pedagogy. Bad student evaluations supposedly mean that one is not good enough to teach and, thus, must seek another profession. What about good and bad student evaluations in the same document? Who decides what metric to follow? And for what purpose? As the popular adage goes, we cannot please everybody. But when we examine the biases inherent in our student evaluations, we note the common thread of these comments:

• “she has an accent and hard to understand sometimes”
• “cannot understand her instructions”
• “unclear guidelines and sometimes confusing”
• “she talks fast and mumbles to herself”
• “she laughs”

Of course, there are many other examples in our files.

Reflecting on these general commentaries of our teaching, Roxanna said, “I could not reconcile in what aspect I was not being clear on those matters. At the start of the semester and weeks before due dates, I always reminded the class and reviewed the course syllabus, the assignment guidelines, and the marking grid.” We tend to give flexibility in assignment deadlines and consider unforeseen circumstances. When we ask our students if they have any concerns or questions about the assignments, the overall response is yes. In what aspect are we then unclear? When we discuss the guidelines with an accent? Purwar (2004, 52) argues that “authority is seen to be especially misplaced when it is clearly vested in a woman of color.” As racialized academics, we bear the brunt of disappointment from students who claim that

• “it’s a waste of money”
• “course did not show promise as expected”
• “could have been better”

From our standpoint, critical thinking is part of the learning process in the production of and completion of assignments. The process of completion forms part of the grade, especially group projects using peer reviews of performance. Based on our experiences, students want a clear goal toward a preferred mark using a checkbox technique: if I do this, I get X points. It seems that when student expectations fail, the onus is on us for having not provided clarity in instruction. The unfavourable perceptions about our legitimacy to teach at the university find evidence in poor student evaluations of teaching (Ross and Edwards 2016), particularly from these students. Sometimes it’s difficult to accept that some high-performing students in the class do not care about completing the online student evaluations. For Glenda, she has opted for an in-class student evaluation to get a real-time performance of students as well.

Bias is a given, but there are more acceptable biases than others. Race should not be a factor in our student evaluations. Race should not matter in the evaluation of how we teach or handle our classes. Race is not a measure of our educational and professional qualifications to effectively deliver the content of the syllabus. But IT is. Our colleagues who are represented in administrative bodies that serve as the gatekeepers of our academic careers all tend to be white and often use student evaluations as evidentiary material to justify effective teaching, broadly construed. They too often demonstrate the same barrier to inclusive teaching practices when biases become the bases for assessments. On the one hand, as racialized academics, we seem to be constructed as possible good teachers first regardless of our research and publication record. For non-racialized academics, on the other hand, the first focus is on research and publications, while teaching effectiveness is secondary. These are the realities we come to believe while working at the university.

No Conclusion: Race and Equality

The university is ideally a space of diversity, inclusion, and belonging for students, staff, faculty, and the community. It serves the mandate of providing higher education and learning to those who participate in its programs, projects, and activities, whether directly or indirectly sponsored. As a space, it constructs an ambiance of equality for all following principles of non-discrimination through policies and laws. But this space is contested by the differing values held by those who populate it, one of which is the place of race in academia. Our experience using duoethnography suggests that race matters in the university—with our students and among themselves and with our colleagues. As Filipinos, our identity as racialized academics in Lethbridge is a continuous quest for acceptance and recognition of who we are as individuals. Our gendered bodies do not exist in a cultural vacuum; they form part of who we are constructed to be. As instructors and knowledge producers in a discipline that remains connected with political moments, our standpoint from difference is our path toward equality.

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