This phenomenological study draws from postmodern, and post-positivist theories to describe and explain Somali high school students’ perception and experience of racialization. It explains how the experience of racialization and its impact on embodied perception of self and other are key factors in how Somali youth experience school. Two questions guide this study: 1) How do schooling experiences influence how Somali students are positioned by school staff, peers, and how they position themselves? 2) How do Somali students experience and make sense of racialization. To investigate these questions, I interviewed nine high school Somali immigrant and refugee students about their school experiences. In addition to phenomenology, I also employed ethnographic data collection methods, where I carried out school observation and informal conversation with teachers and school administrators. Connecting narrative accounts of lived experience to racialized identities based on visibility of race and religion. My findings show that Somali youth’s interpretation and understanding of racial situations depended on the degree to which they understood and internalized mainstream American discourse about Muslims, and immigrants. This was particularly true for how Somali youth interpreted being Muslim and the meanings they attached to religious identity markers such as the headscarf. My analysis show that the production of racialized identities had more to do with the how Somali students perceive racial situations in their school communities.
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