S-07: Growing Up as a Minority: Please Don't Give Us Labels

This symposium critically examines how educational labels—such as “minority,” “underserved,” or implicitly harmful phrases like “you are stupid”—shape student identities and reinforce educational hierarchies. Grounded in Critical Race Theory, post-structuralist thought, and autoethnography, the session explores how institutional language often reduces students to fixed roles, limiting their agency and potential. Through personal narrative, student-centered storytelling, and discourse analysis, the presentation centers the lived experiences of marginalized students, revealing how labeling can function as a subtle mechanism of control. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, it also highlights how students resist and redefine these imposed identities. Participants will be invited to reflect on their own roles in labeling, engage with counter-narratives, and share personal or student experiences through guided discussion. Together, we will explore how to transform educational spaces into ones of openness, dignity, and possibility—where labels no longer define, but dialogue liberates.