Category: Authored Post

The Model Minority is Losing Patience

Asian-Americans are the United States’ most successful minority, but they are complaining ever more vigorously about discrimination, especially in academia

This article looks at the history of Asian immigration and opportunity, and discusses possible factors that contribute to the high rate of academic achievement in the Asian-American population, along with the apparently disproportional university admissions numbers. It also considers the “bamboo ceiling” — the phenomenon of Asians excelling in lower and middle levels of professions, but no being visible in the upper echelons — and points at several potential reasons behind this discrepancy, from ingrained shyness to a dearth of mentors.

I’ve highlighted some excerpts below, but I encourage you to click here to read the whole article.

 

On Asian-American academic achievement:

“Asian-Americans make up 5.6% of the population of the United States, [yet] they make up more than 30% of the recent American maths and physics Olympiad teams and Presidential Scholars, and 25-30% of National Merit Scholarships. Among those offered admission in 2013 to New York’s most selective public high schools, Stuyvesant High School and Bronx High School of Science, 75% and 60% respectively were Asian. The Asian population of New York City is 13%.”

“[A study] rejected the idea that Asians were just innately much cleverer than whites: there was an early gap in cognitive abilities, but it declined to insignificance through school. The higher socioeconomic status of Asian parents provided part of the explanation, but only a small part. […] Asian outperformance is thanks in large part to hard work. […] study showed a sizeable gap in effort between Asian and white children, which grew during their school careers.”

“Another study […] shows that Asian-American parents are a lot likelier to spend at least 20 minutes a day helping their children with their homework than any other ethnic group.”

On apparent racial discrimination in academia:

“Some Asians allege that the Ivy Leagues have put an implicit limit on the number of Asians they will admit. [Upon examining admissions data] Asian-Americans need 140 SAT points out of 1,600 more than whites to get a place at a private university, and that blacks need 310 fewer points.”

“Top universities tend to admit blacks and Hispanics with lower scores because of their history of disadvantage; and once the legacies, the sports stars, the politically well-connected and the rich people likely to donate new buildings […] have been allotted their places, the number for people who are just high achievers is limited. Since the Ivies will not stop giving places to the privileged, because their finances depend on the generosity of the rich, the argument homes in on affirmative action.”

“…the Asian-American community is unwilling on the whole to oppose affirmative action. It tends to vote Democratic, and many of its members recall the years when they were a despised, not a model, minority. So those who dislike the way the system works tend to argue for it to be adjusted, not abolished…”

On the “bamboo ceiling”:

“It is true that although Asian-Americans do remarkably well at school and university, and have high average incomes, in the workplace they are under-represented in top jobs […] Asians do well in the lower and middle levels of companies and professions, but are less visible in the upper echelons.”

“Academia […] is stuffed with Asian-American professors, but among America’s 3,000 colleges there are fewer than ten Asian-American presidents”

“High-flying Asian-Americans […] suggest that cultural patterns may contribute to the group’s under-representation at the top. ‘There’s something in the upbringing that makes Asians shy’ […] ‘We’re brought up to be humble, […] My parents didn’t want to rock the boat. It’s about being quiet, not making waves, being part of the team.’ […] Asian-Americans are a large, diverse group exposed to a range of influences, but those who do reflect such patterns may be less likely to bid for leadership, even if they are highly qualified.“

“…Asians may find getting mentors particularly tough. Researchers [found that when students reach out to meet successful academics], [w]hite men got notably more responses than other groups; Asian-Americans of both sexes got fewer. Since the Ivies produce a disproportionate number of CEOs, Congressmen and judges, the apparent bias against Asian-Americans at leading universities may also keep Asians out of leadership spots.”

On political power:

“[A study shows that] it was only when Jews had gained political power that the Ivies stopped discriminating against them.”

“Perceptions that Asian-Americans are being treated unfairly, especially in the workplace, may push more of them into politics.”

 

Questions & Food for thought:

What do you think about the statistics or stereotypes employed this article? Do you think they are backed by legitimate reasoning or can you discern any areas for potential bias?

What are your thoughts on affirmative action and similar reparations?

Is it fair for high achieving individuals in a certain racial group are considered for admission differently than those of other racial groups?

Is it problematic that race is considered and that there may be racial quotas for university admissions? Or is it necessary (and morally just) to consider race if we’re striving for a fair system of academic admissions, given how much race has shaped socioeconomic opportunities historically?

The article provides many factors that influence the level of achievement of Asian Americans in formative schooling, higher education, and the professional world.  Do you agree or do you believe there are other things to consider?

Do you think that an increase of Asian American political representation will change anything?

Is Cultural Appropriation Always Wrong?

An interesting piece by Parul Sehgal which looks at cultural ‘‘cross-pollination’’/‘‘appropriation” throughout history, particularly referencing contemporary examples in pop culture and the resulting heated debate. Sehgal acknowledges the offensive nature of many of these cases, yet considers the dangers of restricting such exchanges.

Highlights

“It’s a truth only selectively acknowledged that all cultures are mongrel.”

“It’s a seasonal controversy that attends awards shows, music festivals, Halloween: In a country whose beginnings are so bound up in theft, conversations about appropriation are like a ceremonial staging of the nation’s original sins.”

“…it has never been easier to proceed with good faith and Google, to seek out and respect context. Social media, these critics suggest, allow us too much access to other people’s lives and other people’s opinions to plead ignorance when it comes to causing offense….Seen in this light, ‘‘appropriation’’ seems less provocative than pitiably uninformed and stale. ”

“…writer Tom Bissell said ‘‘there would be fewer wars’’ if more novelists allowed themselves to imagine themselves into other cultures. It’s a seductive if utterly unverifiable claim.”

—
Click here to read the full article.

Questions:

Is the contemporary  preoccupation with cultural appropriation just part of this generation’s “outrage culture”, or is there legitimate cause for concern?

In your opinion, what is the difference between appropriation and appreciation? Where is the distinction between “colonizing” an identity and celebrating/sharing cultural experiences?

Sehgal talks about the evolution and globalization of hip-hop, which arguably — taking into account Korean b-boy champions, the Russian twerking phenomenon, and Iggy Azalea — has lost its identification with race. In this ever-shrinking world, we are exposed to and influenced by a diverse range of peoples; is it even possible to avoid the intermingling of cultures?

Are there any foreseeable merits to cultural appropriation/exchange? Can it function to bring us closer together as a people?

The Storytellers of Empire

Photograph courtesy of Zackary Canepari

Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie asks American writers why, “Your soldiers will come to our lands, but your novelists won’t.”

I grew up in Pakistan in the 1980s, aware that thinking about my country’s history and politics meant thinking about America’s history and politics. This is not an unusual position. Many countries of the world from Asia to South America exist, or have existed, as American client states, have seen U.S.-backed coups, faced American missiles or sanctions, seen their government’s policies on various matters dictated in Washington. America may not be an empire in the nineteenth century way which involved direct colonization. But the neo-imperialism of America was evident to me by the time I was an adolescent and able to understand these things.

So in an America where fiction writers are so caught up in the Idea of America in a way that perhaps has no parallel with any other national fiction, where the term Great American Novel weighs heavily on writers, why is it that the fiction writers of my generation are so little concerned with the history of their own nation once that history exits the fifty states. It’s not because of a lack of dramatic potential in those stories of America in the World; that much is clear.

In part, I’m inclined to blame the trouble caused by that pernicious word “appropriation.” I first encountered it within a writing context within weeks, perhaps days, of arriving at Hamilton College in 1991. Right away, I knew there was something deeply damaging in the idea that writers couldn’t take on stories about the Other. As a South Asian who has encountered more than her fair share of awful stereotypes about South Asians in the British empire novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I’m certainly not about to disagree with the charge that writers who are implicated in certain power structures have been guilty of writing fiction which supports, justifies and props up those power structures. I understand the concerns of people who feel that for too long stories have been told about them rather than by them. But it should be clear that the response to this is for writers to write differently, to write better, to critique the power structures rather than propping them up, to move beyond stereotype—which you need to do for purely technical reasons, because the novel doesn’t much like stereotypes. They come across as bad writing.

The moment you say, a male American writer can’t write about a female Pakistani, you are saying, Don’t tell those stories. Worse, you’re saying, as an American male you can’t understand a Pakistani woman. She is enigmatic, inscrutable, unknowable. She’s other. Leave her and her nation to its Otherness. Write them out of your history.

—

This is an excerpt from an essay published in Guernica magazine. 

Click here to read the full essay.

Questions:

What do you think of her response to the use of the word “appropriation”, and her recommendation for writers that may be accused of it?

Do you think it’s helpful or harmful if, say, a white American man wrote a story about a South Asian woman/an indigenous community/a black family? Is there anything inherently problematic about it?

Is it possible to capture the spirit of the subjects and properly relay the experiences of a group you don’t belong to?

Can you draw parallels between Brian Fay’s argument in “Do You Have to be One to Know One?” and Shamsie’s essay?

 

Educational Resources

Below are links to some relevant educational pages… have at it!

dcarroll

Racism:

Racial Equity/Diversity Education:

White Privilege:

VIDEO: Bill Nye – Race is a Human Construct

Check out this video of Bill Nye the Science Guy using scientific evidence to argue that “race” doesn’t exist from a biological perspective. Nye first debunks the myth of purebred dogs by analyzing that canine breeding and evolution has yielded a broad spectrum of physical characteristics but no actual variance in species:

“We obsess about whether our dog is a pug-Jack Russell terrier mix with corgi overtones and an oaky finish…whatever. They’re all dogs, okay? And so the idea of a purebred is just a human construct. There’s no such thing – in a sense there’s no such thing as a purebred dog.”

He then draws s comparison between the idea of dog “breeds” and human “races”, both just being constructs:

“If a Papua New Guinean hooks up with a Swedish person all you get is a human.  There’s no new thing you’re going to get. You just get a human…for humankind there’s really no such thing as race. There’s different tribes but not different races. We’re all one species.”

Any thoughts on Nye’s argument?

 

AUDIO: This American Life – The Problem We All Live With

A two part series about how the racial integration of schools is a reform that has been shown to really improve the education for minority children, but that people have apparently given up on. It discusses the case of a school district in Normandy, Missouri (where Michael Brown studied), which accidentally happened upon an integration program.

Click Here.

Why does it matter whether “you have to be one to know one”?

What is at stake in the claim (thesis) of insider epistemology that “you have be one to know one,” either in the individual sense or in the collective/social sense? Consider this assertion: If insider epistemology is really true, it follows then that, “Only African-Americans can really know what it is like to be an African-American, and so only African-Americans can tell what it is to be an African-American. Similarly for other groups: the working class can only be studied fruitfully by those who are themselves members of the working class; only English historians can write a good history of England; only women can describe and explain the actions, feelings, and relations of women. Every group must be its own social scientist.” (Fay 1996: 12)

Is there something wrong with this view? If so, why? If not, why not?  What is your opinion about this? Pay attention to and think about which precise sense of the verb ‘know’ is in play when we are trying to answer this question?