The problem with articles like this—apart from the politically constructed racial category of “Asian”—is that there is no support for anything apart from a lot of narrative and a few anecdotes. Asians have by a good margin the lowest covid death rate of any race, despite being much more likely to live in hard hit urban areas: https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race
The article’s discussion of the “model minority” stereotype is also a clumsy attempt at racialization. The article points to low-income Asian groups like Burmese. But those groups aren’t poor because they’re Asian, they’re poor because they’re economic immigrants and often refugees. Burmese, in particular, are the most recent major Asian immigrant group. 85% of Burmese Americans are first-generation immigrants, while 80% of Japanese Americans are native born. Less than half of Burmese Americans speak English fluently.
But Japanese Americans were also predominantly economic migrants at one point. The important question the article overlooks is income mobility. Asian kids raised in the bottom quantile of income have by far the highest income mobility of any group. 27% will end up in the top quantile by adult hood—almost double the rate for white kids. There is no reason to believe that the Burmese will be any different than say the Vietnamese. Large scale Vietnamese refugee immigration mainly occurred from 1975-2000. As a result, most Vietnamese Americans have been here 20+ years. In that time, Vietnamese Americans have achieved economic parity with whites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U.... So have Laotians and Cambodians, who immigrated, mostly as refugees, around that same time period.
I can’t help but feel like articles like this are an attempt to racialize Asians and make them identify as a marginalized minority group, instead of as individuals who are in the process of achieving upward mobility. Calling the long-standing economic trends a “myth” is borderline deceptive and risky. Clearly something is working. But if you make people think that it isn’t working, you might inadvertently break it.
> Getting tested for COVID-19 didn’t seem like an option for the Rongs. The rumor was that the tests were expensive. Rong also feared the reaction from neighbors.
> “If you test positive, everyone would be scared of you,” said Rong. “Everyone would think you are the devil.”
then:
> Asian case-fatality rate nearly triple that of all other groups in San Francisco County
If a group gets tested less CFR would go up for that group.
But “Economic parity with whites” doesn’t mean sh﹡t when a racial group (edit: not even a racial group) is discriminated in college admissions, corporate leadership roles, etc., which are some of the most vital external decisions for upward mobility. (These are very widely documented so don’t ask me for citations. You can easily find hundred-comment-strong threads on these topics within this very site.) If anything it means the group has managed to “succeed” despite all the racial/cultural roadblocks, and the efforts they put in are not proportionally repaid.
“Individuals who are in the process of achieving upward mobility” — that’s the actual myth. More like work as hard as you can, we’ll randomly select three out of ten to put into the pool of potential upward mobility with all fifty of that other group.
I know some people prefer equality of outcome and don’t feel the slightest shame about pushing down hardworking folks based on their ancestries if that’s what it takes to achieve a semblance of equality and diversity. I can’t have a productive conversation with those people. Actually, you know what, I’ve hardly ever seen anyone convincing anyone on this or any other divisive topic, so here’s my opinion, I don’t care what anyone thinks about it, and I’m not gonna further comment on this.
A lot of the statistics about Asian under representation in leadership positions evaporates when you account for the fact that Asians are quite a bit younger in average than whites. While the percentage of Asians in the population overall is 6-7%, the percentage of Asians in the 60+ cohort is only 4-5%. Also, Asians are a rapidly growing group that mostly comprises immigrants not born in the US. It’s not necessarily a sign of discrimination that there is a lag between when Asians arrive in the US, when they reach economic parity, and when they achieve leadership positions that might require a higher level of being established, US citizenship, many years of company service, etc. As a result of the fact that the Asian population is growing rapidly, you’re looking at statistics that may not be in equilibrium.
Asians account for about 3.7% of Fortune 500 Board seats, which isn’t that far off from the 4-5% of the age cohort you’d expect to have a high level position like that. More important, they account for 8% of new board appointments: https://www.statista.com/statistics/547958/percentage-of-new.... Asian new appointments has tracked the overall percentage of population quite well for the last decade. If anything, Asians are on their way to being a bit over-represented in corporate board seats.
most people's definition of asian refers to the far east (and southeast) asian. India is somewhat explicitly excluded, even tho geographically they are on the same continent as "asians".
I think you will just have to get used to it. It's the same as referring to USA as America - excluding all of South America.
Asians in the UK means Indians, Asians in the US frequently refers to East Asians.
Although in the US, I feel like the ethnicity question is more about pinning down what socioeconomic class you’re in, so the options will lump all of Asia together.
Yep, that's what I'm talking about in the other thread. 0 comments on efficient weight loss techniques, and almost 10 about who should be counted in which pandering group. Wake up, people, identity politics is eating you alive.
The US's weird obsession with "race", a concept that the entire world agrees does not exist does not help. Everything is done through the prism of "race relations", as if that had any sense.
It's not being asian that makes you survive Covid. It's cultural and societal habits. Go to any asian country and you will most likely see people wearing masks when they're sick. Even before covid.
>I can’t help but feel like articles like this are an attempt to racialize Asians and make them identify as a marginalized minority group, instead of as individuals who are in the process of achieving upward mobility. Calling the long-standing economic trends a “myth” is borderline deceptive and risky. Clearly something is working. But if you make people think that it isn’t working, you might inadvertently break it.
Economically us asians are doing quite well but that's not the only aspect of racism that exists. We're marginalized in different ways. It's hard to put into words what this is exactly. Quantitatively you can see an aspect of this in low asian representation in Hollywood but it's much more deeper than that. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsWTFeP1hno&t=3s
As you can see from the video it's not even about economics. It's something else that's deeper because the most insidious thing about it is that huge amount of Asian women sort of have this attitude against their own race as well. It's a subtle sentiment that no one really talks about so it comes out in different ways.
The examples are related to dating but I'm not talking about dating specifically. There is something going on terms of class divide and perspective that is influencing the dating game as a side effect. We talk about class in terms of money but clearly something else is going on with class here that is seperate from money.
It's really something that's hard to pinpoint and as a result I feel a lot of articles like this are written in place of the actual problem.
The article’s discussion of the “model minority” stereotype is also a clumsy attempt at racialization. The article points to low-income Asian groups like Burmese. But those groups aren’t poor because they’re Asian, they’re poor because they’re economic immigrants and often refugees. Burmese, in particular, are the most recent major Asian immigrant group. 85% of Burmese Americans are first-generation immigrants, while 80% of Japanese Americans are native born. Less than half of Burmese Americans speak English fluently.
But Japanese Americans were also predominantly economic migrants at one point. The important question the article overlooks is income mobility. Asian kids raised in the bottom quantile of income have by far the highest income mobility of any group. 27% will end up in the top quantile by adult hood—almost double the rate for white kids. There is no reason to believe that the Burmese will be any different than say the Vietnamese. Large scale Vietnamese refugee immigration mainly occurred from 1975-2000. As a result, most Vietnamese Americans have been here 20+ years. In that time, Vietnamese Americans have achieved economic parity with whites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U.... So have Laotians and Cambodians, who immigrated, mostly as refugees, around that same time period.
I can’t help but feel like articles like this are an attempt to racialize Asians and make them identify as a marginalized minority group, instead of as individuals who are in the process of achieving upward mobility. Calling the long-standing economic trends a “myth” is borderline deceptive and risky. Clearly something is working. But if you make people think that it isn’t working, you might inadvertently break it.