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

Netherlands-born Pete Hoekstra is trying to steal American jobs! This is just the beginning of having immigrants trying to take away US Congress jobs. Netherland-born people will soon run this country if we allow this to happen!

Be scared! Be very scared! As a US-born Asian American, I say we must protect our jobs. USA! USA!

Ok…all of the above was satire. I have no problem with “foreigners” or people born in another country coming to the US and making it. I have a problem with blatant racism as displayed in Pete’s commercial without apology. Do you see the double-standard? Let’s fix it. Vote against Pete Hoekstra.

Miley Cyrus has been photographed while making “slant-eyes” which is an obvious affront to all Asian Americans. There have been cries for apologies which are yet to come. She apologized in the past for posing in a magazine with little but a satin bedsheet, so if there is no apology here, that is unacceptable. I hope we hear about one soon.

Yet again, Asians are targets whereas other races such as African Americans would not have been mocked. You think Miley would show up in pics wearing “blackface”?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_cyrus;_ylt=AmkpXGafdoFRjQ1NqoGh5Q4DW7oF

A yellowface performance is a term analogous to the blackface performances in the past where whites would paint their faces black to portray a person of African descent. Yellowface refers to non-Asians cast and playing Asian characters often with the same mockery that African-American had to endure. Are we making any progress here?

AsianWeek has posted an article with the 25 Most Infamous Yellowface Performances which include such famous mockeries as Breakfast at Tiffanys. These injustices are infuriating. A lot of these films are very old, but some are recent. Would anyone dare pull blackface now? More fighting for our rights is necessary.

Here’s the article: Article

Are Asians really big gamblers? Not that there aren’t other ethnicities, but when you look at the Poker tournaments on TV as well as strolling through casinos, you do notice there are definitely Asians. Does this have anything to do with Asian culture?

Well, Mohegan Sun seems to think that there is a significant enough Asian presence to market directly to that niche. They just opened up a gambling and eating area called Sunrise Square to target Asians coming from Boston and NYC. The marketing group at Mohegan Sun states that 25% of the table game revenue come from Asian Americans, and that the clientele has grown by 45% in the past two years.

How do you break down that data? Well, I don’t believe that 1 in 4 people in the Northeast region are Asian. But, they also state that it’s revenue and not visitors. Is it possible that the Asians that come play with a bigger bank roll? The clientele has grown quite a bit though. It’d be interesting to see more statistics, but the bottom line is that it is indeed a significant group to the Mohegan Sun.

Article: http://www.courant.com/business/hc-sunshort0811.artaug11,0,6105342.story

So full disclaimer…I probably fit this description although even within this umbrella there are so many different types. When you examine Asian Americans, how can you even try to classify everyone from Asia as being similar in any way? It’s impossible.

When looking at a recent government report, there are a lot of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indian students that do fit this mold but many Asians do not (and even many individuals in the previous ethnicities listed). Many of the families that have these “model minority” children have saved money for their children’s college and don’t depend on their children for income at home.

Pacific Islanders and Southeast Asians of Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Thai, and Burmese descent are found to not be enrolled in as many rigorous math and reading classes. Many also have to work to make money to help out with the family.

The bottom line is really that you can’t group all Asian-Americans together because as a group, they appear to have a high level of education and income but looking at sub-groups paints a different picture. For the enlightened, how obvious can it get? But unfortunately there are still a whole lot of unenlightened people out there.

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