Asian Majority

Being a minority in the US has placed a lot of challenging barriers on us including Asian Americans. It’s true that many of us have succeeded in academics and the work place, but there are still barriers to reach the pinnacle in all aspects. This is apparent in the recent success of Jeremy Lin.

Here is someone who rose to the top at all levels of basketball in High School winning states but was under-recruited by schools. He excelled in college and was under-recruited in the NBA. He finally only broke out when Knicks were more desperate.

Let’s take a look at academia where you wouldn’t think Asian Americans would have any complaints. There was a recent article by New York Times on the possible bias that Asian Americans base when applying to elite colleges showing how Asians had to score much higher in tests to get in. For most Asian Americans I know, this was no surprise at all and almost accepted as fact.

That is a problem though to accept such things. There needs to be a fight against this type of discrimination which is hurting students and just another systematic way to hold back a minority. I have seen many arguments that there is a lot more to getting accepted than test scores which is true, but a lot of people I know who did not get into top schools had extra curricular activities that were no less impressive than others accepted.

People try to make claims of diversity, but if that’s the case, should sports not have the same type of diversity clauses too? In fact as shown by Jeremy Lin, it goes the other extreme in sports. If we haven’t seen “your kind” succeed in pro-basketball, then you have to not play as well as everyone but even better to even get in.

Let’s take another look beyond college and into corporations. There are a lot of successful Asians, but are they at the top of the firms and companies? There is under-representation there as well. Many of the exceptions are tech companies that people have founded themselves. Rather than being given opportunities, they had to go create their own. That was the only way to get it.

Many senior managers still think Asian-Americans don’t have the social, leadership, etc. skills to lead and manage. Well, many of us do and will take companies to another level. Give people the chance. If they fail, fine, but don’t assume anything.

NY Times Article

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