Even the Dirt Is Dangerous: Racism in U.S. American Study Abroad Programs

Higher education has the potential to greatly impact the ubiquity of racism in our daily lives. One strategy is the use of international study abroad programs. Study abroad programs are used to promote global and cross-cultural competencies (e.g. Marx & Moss, 2011; Sharma, El-Atwani, Rahatzad, Ware, Phillion & Malewski, 2012). However, study abroad programs cannot reach these goals without directly engaging with racism. As White American teachers, we see the grave need for study abroad programs to embody anti-racism. We believe that without conscious attempts to critically engage with race, study abroad programs have the strong potential to feed into American students’ stereotypes about the foreign Other. As a practitioner-based (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Hubbard & Powers, 2003) critique, we discuss examples of racism utilizing the cultural deficit model (Glazer & Moynihan, 1963) and Critical Race Theory (Bergerson, 2003; Parker & Lynn, 2002) as frameworks. We then elaborate on how we have addressed these and other potentially problematic moments we have witnessed during study abroad programs, both as students and as teacher-leaders.