The Asian American community has now been able to gain traction in projecting social inequities, and the marginalization of the community has been faced with for generations. Nativism and dominant narratives designed to add to the invisibility of Asian Americans subsequently created issues of generalization, linguicism, and negotiations of identity. Pan-ethnicity, or the categorization of Asians into a homogenous racial group, further perpetuates the existence of diverse cultural heritages and languages that exist in the Asian community. Ethnic-racial identities of second and third-generation Asian Americans are influenced by American society’s dominant narrative of the model-minority stereotype and a factor of English hegemony. Asian American students, hence, are faced with negotiations of their cultural identity; students either embrace or forget aspects of their ethnic cultures to navigate social and academic spaces.

This qualitative study aimed to create a counter-narrative for Asian American students as a means to gather and analyze their experiences with racism and the formation of ethnic-racial identities within their school institutions. There is also a focus on how students perceive themselves as Asian American in contrast to dominant narratives or misconceptions they may have heard from peers, teachers, or administration. The study investigated students’ actions to either embrace cultural stereotypes or break them by participating in extracurricular activities or developing their own mantras. Through the purposeful sampling of Asian American students who participated in the Asian Student Association at the school site, data was collected through a series of interviews as a means for participants to reflect on their high school experience.