ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on a strength-based approach to examining students’ perceived racial discrimination in relation to their social support from significant adults in school. Using a mixed-method design, the chapter works with a sample of 765 Grade Five to Nine Chinese Canadian students, 255 of whom reported perceived racial discrimination in school and community. In the supressing field of racial discrimination, the habitus of the Chinese body is misrecognised and arbitrarily defined with negative value. The phenotypical element of the habitual race remains visible and durable and cannot be readily rewritten. But the social element of the habitual race can be redefined by reshaping the ecology of the field of secondary socialisation. Within the school field, significant adults have power to redesign the school climate and reposition the habitus of race. In the context of building resilience to racial discrimination, the chapter proposes secondary-order change that reshapes the field, rather than first-order change that reshapes the habitus. The sociological approach to resilience building distinguishes the chapter from much extant work that is reliant on an individualist, pathological perspective on the ill-being of ethnic minority children in the face of racial discrimination.
