Editor’s Note: The following is an email discussion that took place between Sarah and Nicole on October 20. Nicole Cliffe saw our tweets about some of the articles discussed below and the challenges of writing about Asian Americans, and asked us to write up this conversation for The Toast.
Nicole: Hey, Sarah. Before we get into Jack Linshi’s Time article (“The Real Problem When It Comes to Diversity and Asian-Americans”) and Julianne Hing’s response at Colorlines, I just wanted to acknowledge something you said about cringing in anticipation before you read the original piece. Because I had that same reaction when I saw the headline, and I admit, I immediately checked the byline to see if the writer had an obviously Asian name. Not that that’s any guarantee you won’t dislike something you read on this subject, but it’s the first thing I do when I see any story about Asians. Like you, I was relieved that the Time article wasn’t worse.
Sarah: I think this point is actually super important to the discussion. A lot of the stuff we see written about Asian Americans and race is just plain bad. And that totally colors our perception of Linshi’s Time article, and our reaction to Hing’s critique.
Let’s review our initial reactions to Linshi’s piece in Time. I think I said something like, “It’s fine, I just really didn’t have to read that.” It’s pretty basic stuff, information that circulates fairly regularly among people who take an interest in Asian American issues.
Nicole: My reaction was nearly identical to yours: this is okay, but it wasn’t written for me. And that’s okay, it doesn’t need to be written for you or me; it can be aimed at mostly white readers of Time and/or people who don’t read much about race.
But I feel as though many, many articles we read about Asian Americans and diversity never move much beyond the “Asians are being left out of the conversation!” point, and that always makes me uncomfortable. Sometimes we are “left out” because we don’t face the same racism. I think it’s rather disingenuous to claim to be “left out” of the black/white framing, and then conveniently ignore or not talk about the ways Asian Americans benefit from not being seen as black.
Sarah: I find it really hard to phrase my next point (which might indicate that it’s just not a good point). But mainstream media has an allergy to talking about (current, existing, everywhere-in-society-not-just-in-the-South-or-Neo-Nazi-circles) white supremacy. That idea that white supremacy and anti-blackness are at the foundation of American society is a very familiar notion to people who spend time reading about race. But for everyone else, “post-racial” rhetoric is the dominant mode of thinking.
Yes, talking about racism and discrimination against Asian Americans is extremely weird without broaching how the model minority myth has been used as a weapon against both black and brown people (and, let’s not forget, non-East Asian AAPIs). But it would also be weird, in such a mainstream outlet, to not only broach the unfamiliar (to its audience) topic of Asian American discrimination, but also simultaneously throw this bomb about how all races and ethnicities in America are defined relative to anti-blackness.
Can a 101 piece about Asian Americans, aimed at a mainstream white audience, actually successfully encompass the issue of anti-blackness? …I want to say yes, but the thought of actually trying to write that piece makes me want to run away screaming.
Nicole: Right, and there is a reason sites that explicitly focus on race exist – otherwise we don’t get the kind of coverage and criticism we want. One hopes someday that will change and these issues will move into the mainstream.
You’re definitely right that white supremacy is not a comfortable topic, and might be an especially challenging one for a mostly white media to cover well. But it also doesn’t make much sense to talk about race or the model minority myth at all without acknowledging white supremacy and the anti-blackness at its root. You could even argue that Asian Americans are uniquely positioned to talk about this because that stereotype means we are used as leverage against other people of color. We do benefit (even if we don’t want to) from anti-blackness, so it’s on us to speak out.
Linshi, I would guess, has read many of the same articles you and I have. There’s little chance he is unfamiliar with these issues. This is when I really wonder about the editorial process he went through. I could see Time or another publication just asking for a readable article on Asian discrimination and representation, and then being thrilled with this. Time probably thought this was an edgy piece, because Asian American experiences are often rendered invisible, so by default anything that’s written about us seems novel. And I think our frustration with that fact makes articles like this appealing to many of us, even though we might notice some places where it falls short.
Do you ever feel grateful when a reasonably thoughtful, not-terrible story is published about Asians? And if so, isn’t that way too low of a bar?
Sarah: You remember that my initial reaction to the Linshi piece was kind of dismissive and brusque. You know, one of the reasons why I reacted the way that I did is that I was angry about having to feel relieved or grateful that it was reasonably thoughtful. It’s way too low of a bar.
The thing is, I can totally see myself sending this article to white friends who ask me about these issues. It’s well-written, it’s non-terrible, it has a lot of interesting information (even if the information is not novel to me). A world in which the Linshi piece exists is better for me than a world in which it doesn’t.
Nicole: So we both read that article and shrugged, then felt relieved it wasn’t worse. Julianne Hing at Colorlines had a different response. She wrote this, which I really appreciated:
People who shape the dominant political narrative in this country…have little use for substantive conversation about any group of non-white people unless it’s to uphold, in stark terms, notions of black inferiority and white supremacy. To that end, Asians have actually been the subject of quite a lot of public fascination, mainly as props used to denigrate blacks and Latinos and programs designed to support them and other people of color—including segments of the Asian-American population. All too often, Asians are willing to play along.
This is exactly what was missing from Linshi’s article, and it needs to be said, and often. But I didn’t read Linshi as “angry at the ‘diversity’ conversation,” as Hing did. What did you think about that response? I’m also curious to hear what you thought of both takes on Asian American representation in tech, because I know you write about tech law and are embedded in the tech feminism world.
Sarah: I agree, that point was dead on. But there was an interesting slip in the two preceding paragraphs:
Linshi’s right about the discrepancy and that relative lack of discussion. But he interprets the “silence” as “say[ing] this: Asians and Asian-Americans are smart and successful, so hiring or promoting them does not count as encouraging diversity. It says: there is no such thing as underrepresentation of Asians and Asian-Americans.”
It’s a provocative point. But he doesn’t fill that silence with meaningful context or stories of actual tech-sector workers’ personal experiences. Instead, Linshi posits that this modern-day exclusion of Asians from the diversity discourse fits in with a history of negligence beginning in 1965, when the nation functionally repealed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first federal law to exclude immigration on the basis of race.
She then goes on to make her point that it’s not so much tied to a long narrative of anti-Asian discrimination as it is to a model minority myth that is inextricable from the ideology of white supremacy/black inferiority. But the progression of Linshi’s article isn’t meant to explain away “silence” with things like the Chinese Exclusion Act, it’s meant to flesh out the historical dehumanization of Asian Americans. Asians are made out to be a faceless force to feared, whether in foreign relations or in the jobs market. From the Chinese Exclusion Act, to the Red Scares (which continue today), to Whiz Kids. Asian Americans might be Whiz Kids, but they just don’t have enough “personality” to make it into the upper echelons of management, or the ranks of founders, or venture capitalists.
I think it’s incredibly important to point out this discrepancy. See Marc Andreessen in New York Magazine just this week. He says:
All the diversity studies say that the engineering population is like 70% white and Asian. Let’s dig into that for a second. First, apparently Asian doesn’t count as diverse. And then “white”: When you actually go in these companies, what you find is it’s American people, but it’s also Russians, and Eastern Europeans, and French, and German, and British. And then there are the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Thais, Indonesians, and Vietnamese. All these different countries, all these different cultures. To believe in a systematic pattern of discrimination, you’d have to believe that we’re discriminatory toward certain people without being discriminatory at all toward an extremely broad range of ethnicities and religions.
He’s using Asian Americans in tech as a shield against accusations of discrimination! And yet compare Paul Graham’s words on what kind of founders he funds:
One quality that’s a really bad indication is a CEO with a strong foreign accent. I’m not sure why. It could be that there are a bunch of subtle things entrepreneurs have to communicate and can’t if you have a strong accent. Or, it could be that anyone with half a brain would realize you’re going to be more successful if you speak idiomatic English, so they must just be clueless if they haven’t gotten rid of their strong accent. I just know it’s a strong pattern we’ve seen.
Another quote from Paul Graham:
I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg. There was a guy once who we funded who was terrible. I said: “How could he be bad? He looks like Zuckerberg!”
This goes to really deep-seated, unconscious myths about who gets to be exceptional, who gets to be a prodigy. Asian Americans are “good at math” but they’re not creators. They’re not heroes. They don’t get the funding, they don’t get the IPO, they will always be the sidekick. I’m reminded of the movie 21, which is based on a true story about Asian American MIT students. The cast is all white. Harvard and MIT geniuses are supposed to look like Mark Zuckerberg. Yes, there are notable people of color who’ve made it big in tech! But the racial discrepancies in the different elite classes of Silicon Valley (engineer, founder, venture capitalist) should not go unnoticed.
And obviously, being the robotic second fiddle is greatly preferable to being smeared the way that black people are: the problem minority, instead of the model minority. Being a huge part of Silicon Valley and partaking in its wealth, even at the “lower” levels, disproportionately benefits the Asian American community compared to other minorities. I take issue with Andreessen’s remarks, but there’s something to it: Asians and Asian Americans are part of the 70%. We are locked out of the top, but we are also complicit in a larger diversity problem in tech. It’s a hard thing to talk about – how Asian Americans have a problem, and are a problem, all at once.
Nicole: Speaking of conversations about diversity, sometimes the the discussion is driven by numbers – inaccurate, underreported or under-analyzed numbers – that don’t necessarily give us the entire picture. I mean, companies are making up their own definitions of “diversity.” What do calls for diversity even mean if anyone can go and interpret it however they choose, leaving out pesky little things like “race” and “gender”?
When we do try to insert Asians into the conversation about representation, there’s always a tough balance to strike between “things could be way better” and “things could be way worse.” The representation gap versus the leadership gap is one that Hing mentions in her response: “What seems to be true across the board for the tech companies that shared their demographic data is that Asians make up large percentages of tech workers, but make up smaller portions of those in leadership ranks.” This is also the point Linshi wanted to make, and the reason why Time probably thought his article would be informative, even provocative for many readers. Again, I think it’s a point many of us take for granted, but perhaps it would be news to some of your white friends, because…
Years ago I was trying to explain to a white colleague what the model minority myth is and why it’s harmful to Asian Americans, not just the people of color it is regularly used to bludgeon, and she said: “So people think you’re smart and good at math and respectful of authority, what’s the big deal?” The big deal is that it contributes to this overarching, universal and flawed idea of what it means to be Asian American, and makes our challenges, our problems, the wide range of our stories harder to see. We can be book-smart, but we can’t be leaders, we can’t be problem-solvers, we can’t be creative, as you point out – and in pop culture you see few instances where we are allowed to play the lead or even the villain, roles with real power and agency. I feel as though being an Asian American means a lifelong battle against being viewed as an outsider, though that might be changing somewhat. So I did appreciate that Linshi tried to point that out, and by the way he did so rather carefully, even optimistically, with a lot less anger/frustration than I feel.
Before we close, I want to talk about some of the wider media coverage of Asians. There’s a reason both you and I preemptively cringe when we see a new story about Asian Americans. Too often people try to tell stories about Asians and Asian Americans only in contrast to the white “real American” norm – so even discussions that are focused on us, supposedly, are in fact all about the all-powerful white gaze. (Yes, this is our chance to talk about those cosmetic surgery pieces and why they’re so horrible.)
Sarah: Oh GOD the cosmetic surgery stories are the BANE of my existence. “Look at all these women getting surgery it’s so terrifying Asian societies are terrifying look at the terrifying sameness of their faces.” And then of course no one writes up about The Scourge of American Orthodontist Procedures And What It Says About American Society. Over the summer there was this piece in The New York Times about how wonderful it is to go platinum blonde, with nary a word about how everyone getting their hair dyed blonde or platinum blonde are all trying to look the same.
And then there’s the thing where “all look the same” is the same racist bullshit we’ve had to put up with all our lives, surgery or no surgery. I have an Asian American friend here in the Bay Area who runs in similar circles. She has glasses and sometimes dyes her hair (my hair is bright red/pink right now). We otherwise look really different, have different haircuts, are different heights, talk really differently. So many people have mistaken us for each other. I got congratulated on my wedding once, in a bathroom – that’s how I found out she’d gotten married in Vegas. Just. Ugh.
To make things even more complicated, I do think that many elements of the plastic surgery craze are sexist and racist and colonialist. It’s just that we – as Asians – never get to talk about it on our terms. It’s just white people gawking at the weird foreigners.
Nicole: That is so maddening. I mean, what Asian hasn’t been mistaken for a totally different Asian, but still. Last time it happened to me I was at a wedding – I was the only nonwhite person in attendance – and this lady kept insisting that she had seen me at the golf club. (ME AT THE GOLF CLUB, SARAH.) She would not let it go, and wouldn’t stop asking if I knew so-and-so from the club, and I could not escape without losing my spot in the buffet line.
(I would also be happy if Facebook would stop asking me to tag myself as one of my Korean friends. #alllooksame)
Like you, I find the cosmetic surgery trend extremely troubling for lots of reasons. But it drives me batty that we can’t, as you say, talk about it on our own terms. A very serious issue is being set up for what amounts to concern-trolling at best and an exploitative means of entertainment at worst. And it also seems remarkably simplistic and convenient to claim that all of these poor Asian women must be doing it because they want to look more “Western.” Of the Asian women I know who have considered plastic surgery, not one has ever told me it’s because she wants to look white. And yet somehow that’s how these stories are framed, again, in an overwhelmingly white media.
When I saw this article in New York Magazine earlier this year, it was another one I thought I should brace myself for. I was all ready to hate-read it. But it was one of the most thoughtful pieces I’d ever read on the topic. And this part made me want to cheer: “No matter what white people say, this isn’t about them. Plastic surgery doesn’t have to be a sign of deference to some master race.” And this, too: “the more you talk to people who have actually undergone these procedures, the harder it becomes to view their choices as simple racial capitulations.”
Let’s be real, WHITE PEOPLE: THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU is something that should really make its way into more articles on race.
Sarah: Oh my god, Facebook keeps trying to tag me as my Asian friends too. The worst.
As someone whose aunt offered to pay for her eyelid surgery at the age of 12 (no, I didn’t take her up on it), I do think a lot of those surgeries in particular are driven by something racial/colonial. Plastic surgery is complicated and I don’t think many people do it specifically to “look white.” But there’s something to be said about how the entire cosmetics/beauty industry is set up to accommodate Western beauty ideals. Sometimes surgery seems necessary just to engage with basic feminine routines.
I didn’t learn how to do my eye makeup until a couple years ago, because it was just too hard to deal with my monolids. There’s nothing intrinsically trickier about my eyelids. But the beauty industry – the availability of tools, the kinds of properties that products have, the tutorials that get printed in magazines – is designed for double fold eyelids. That’s why you get stuff like eyelid glue and eyelid tape and eyelid surgery. It’s “easier” to do your makeup – meaning it’s easier to conform to tools and products and rituals that were designed for other people.
Nicole: I would never have made that connection with cosmetics if you hadn’t pointed it out. I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but literally everything is rigged, isn’t it?
Growing up adopted and without a strong connection to any other Koreans, for a long time my racial/cultural identity was reduced to the simple fact that I knew damn well, and was not allowed to forget, ever, that I was Not White. I’ve spent so many years – as I think a lot of Asian Americans have – trying to climb out of that Not White box. Trying to define myself in more positive terms: not “I’m not this,” but “I AM this.” Which is why I frankly tire of stories about Asian Americans that seem to be largely focused on what white people think about us, and how they do or don’t understand us, and how they do or don’t “include” us.
And I think this is one of the reasons I write, and maybe it’s one of your reasons, too – because from media portrayals to beauty standards to workplace representation to the kind of commentary that gets published about us, we see a clear need to create that necessary space for ourselves. We aren’t all that well represented in a lot of areas, and even when we are represented, we’re not necessarily seen as or allowed to be whole people. So we need to find ways to represent ourselves.
Tags: asian americans, diversity, media, nicole s. chung, race, racism, sarah jeong, white people this isn’t about you
Great discussion. On the topic of plastic surgery, do you think there’s a difference between why Asian-American women in the US get the surgery, vs. women in Asia?
Funny, I did not read this piece as an invitation to query the authors on Asian issues, but more as a conversation about how mainstream media coverage of these issues almost never resonates with the population it’s purporting to cover. Your question is valid, but a more relevant question would be: why is this particular topic so interesting to you? Plastic surgery takes up a WILDLY disproportionate amount of the (scant) media coverage of Asians and Asian Americans. Your answer might shed some light on why these media pieces are written the way they are: if Asian women can’t relate to an article that is ostensibly all about them, whose curiosity is being satisfied and why?
You’re right, this wasn’t the time or the place for my question. Why it interests me is my job is in the field of Japan-US relations, so I come across these sorts of articles a lot. And you’re right, they take up a distressingly large amount of media coverage of Asians and Asian-Americans. I think why they keep coming up is as Nicole and Sarah say: it’s a way for the mainstream US media and its audience to gawk at “weird foreigners” and reinforce racist notions of Asians/Asian-Americans as strange and “wanting to be white.”
Ouch. So eyelid surgery is a common thing that girls’ relatives pressure them into?
I grew up on the East Coast, rather a long time ago, in an area that had a lot of 2nd-generation Jewish immigrants, and a lot of high school girls got pressured into getting nose jobs. And a lot of them were good at math and science (because, as somebody said below, their parents pressured them into working really hard), and playing classical violin (though violin was actually traditional for Jews from some areas.) And they might join the country club, but a decade or two earlier they wouldn’t have been allowed to. And articles written for majority-culture audiences about “the Jews”? Fortunately we didn’t have internet comments in those days, because you wouldn’t have wanted to read them.
Hurts me so hard that this is the first comment. Sigh.
“To believe in a systematic pattern of discrimination, you’d have to believe that we’re discriminatory toward certain people without being discriminatory at all toward an extremely broad range of ethnicities and religions.”
hahahaha oh my god BREAKING NOT ALL PEOPLE WITH RACIST ATTITUDES ARE EQUALLY BIASED AGAINST ALL ETHNIC GROUPS HOW CAN THIS BE???
One of my favorite (i.e., not favorite) things about the “model minority” stereotype is how it magically erases both current AND past racism, even while pretending to acknowledge it. The whole stereotype is set up as “Asian-Americans *were* discriminated against (by someone, we don’t know who, leave it in passive tense) but they’ve triumphed via Good Old Fashioned American Values (See? They’re just like Us and not scary at all! You can harness their powers to help your own business!) and now racism is over so no need to change anything.” Ugh, the worst.
P.S. I really liked the format of this article in addition to the content. Thanks for posting it!
And don’t forget the *awesome* (i.e., not awesome at all) notion of completely forgetting that E.Asians aren’t scary anymore when it comes time for another OHGOD CHINA’S GONNA EAT US ALL article.
This is an important point. I think various Asian communities — not just East Asians — have a tenuous, hard-to-define place in American society…we are often seen as the “good” people of color (barffff, fyvm, etc.) and yet, when there’s a reason, we’re easily turned on/vilified because we are still The Other. It’s NOT the same racism that other black and brown people face. But it’s confusing and frustrating. It also makes it difficult to find your place (or challenge where others want to put or keep you) when you never know exactly which role you’ve been cast in. You never know what’s coming.
There are the weird “conversations about racism” that happen around me but “you’re Asian so it doesn’t count” and HOW IS THAT TRUE? In living memory, my Japanese American family (most of them born in the US) were either sent to internment camps or ran away to the watermelon-farming depths of Colorado. All while losing everything they’d worked so hard for (jobs, homes, everything).
I’ll accept on some level that it’s a different kind of racism, but it’s still a challenge and something that needs to be discussed. Add on top of it the differing reactions to my gay-Asian-ness (I’m gaysian!) and it’s So Much Other, So Little Time.
Ahhh yeah, my ancestral family home was destroyed by American bombs during the war. My family is cut off from another part of the family because of American foreign policy– and of course those family members are generally considered to be enemies of the US. But I’m a nice, safe, clean, polite model minority, right?
Oh yeah, there’s such a delightful (i.e., not delightful, actually horrible) tone where Asian-Americans are “tame” and helpful, like a pet! But Asians actually *in* Asia (especially E.Asians) are scary and wild and could overrun America with their scary, feral ways.
This is fascinating and I’m just letting my brain soak in most of it, but reading the early part of the post—about who this article is written for, and the difficulty in deciding how much complexity and nuance to present—reminds me of the difficulties faced by science communicators and journalists. Too much information and complexity and you’re just repeating the scientist’s journal article; too little complexity and the point gets so distorted and stretched that it’s hardly worth reading.
In some ways, deep scholarship in feminism and race face similar problems in presenting their views and arguments to a public that is passingly familiar with these topics, but lacks the vocabulary and hell, the sheer time it takes to ruminate and think through some of these things.
I have some more thoughts on this, but I fear I’m edging in on mansplain-y territory, so I’ll just leave this here and hope maybe it sparks some kind of discussion of the parallels and the ways in which the two issues differ.
As someone who is heavy on the analogies when discussing anything that is at all removed from the five senses (and even sometimes there), I’ve now deemed this analogy worthwile enough to file away for later need. Or later examination, should I be so lucky as to find myself in a(nother) space advanced enough for it.
I think that’s a really valid point. I remember a recent incident about Anita Sarkeesian where someone said what she was doing was important, but that it just didn’t make sense to the audience watching her videos. Basically: Yes, feminists understood what she was saying about representation in media, but people unfamiliar with feminist vocabulary and concepts wouldn’t get it.
I think the same (or a similar thing) happens when pieces are written about race. There’s a specific vocabulary used in really thoughtful, scholarly pieces about both topics that you don’t tend to find as often in mainstream discussions. And while I do think it’s disappointing that most people can’t be bothered to dig a little deeper and find out about that vocabulary/those concepts, I still think it’s something that happens.
I think this is a great point, and says something really devastating about how the project to understand race has become a specialization relegated to small bubbles, instead of something that everyone strives to engage in.
“So people think you’re smart and good at math and respectful of authority, what’s the big deal?” The big deal that it contributes to this overarching, universal and flawed idea of what it means to be Asian American, and makes our challenges, our problems, the wide range of our stories harder to see.
It’s such a poisonous idea that prejudice doesn’t count if it attributes and assumed characteristics that the attributing party sees as positive. It’s still assigning people — a wide, varied population of people — to a narrow range of expected and accepted behaviors, talents, and abilities. It’s limiting.
That break-down of how eye shadow packaging and tutorials elide the experiences and needs of a huge segment of the population is fascinating.
I think one of the frequently-overlooked harms of the model minority myth is that it makes it so easy for people to dismiss and belittle achievements of AAPI. Oh, you got a good grade on that test? You got into a good college? You got a scholarship? Well yeah, it’s because you’re Asian. (No, it’s because I busted my ass studying, you dumb fuck.) All of our individual effort is reduced to some mythologized ability we naturally have to be Good At Certain Things – but never great, never the best. It’s almost analogous to the “twice as good” syndrome that is foisted upon the black community (but obviously nothing equivalent).
And don’t even get me started on the “you’re not good at math, your ancestors must be furious” bullshit.
I also didn’t realize until fairly recently that I wasn’t naturally inept at make-up, that my face isn’t naturally wrong, but that the tutorials I was reading were not designed for my facial structure. Kevin AuCoin’s fantastic fascinating make-up bible touted by everyone? Not written for me. I think make-up is kind of a fascinating art, in that it’s an actual ART, but I kind of despair for myself ever learning the skill, even with the proliferation of fantastic tools like YouTube videos. I’ve spent so many of my younger years disappointed and frustrated at a face that just would not work that even knowing that it’s white supremacy and not something inherent to me I don’t know if I want to put myself through that again. (I just get cool glasses now, instead.)
I had the exact same issue with eye makeup! It was a huge revelation for me when I started looking at tutorials/FOTDs done by asian beauty bloggers instead of the “good for asian/hooded eyes” type tutorials done on people whose eyes were a completely different shape.
Hey Phire, Sarah here! I only really got into cosmetics in the last few years, and it wouldn’t have happened without discovering this one Korean-American beauty guru. Getting the routine of this tutorial down pat demystified a lot of things for me: http://www.frmheadtotoe.com/2012/11/makeup-for-gl… (and it’s for people with glasses!). Not sure if you ever want to give it another try (believe me, I feel your frustration!), but starting with instructions designed for monolids made all the difference for me.
I appreciate the tip! It’s funny, my realization about make-up came around the same time when I also started trying much harder to live the “I am here for other women” model discussed in the Hairpin the other day (http://thehairpin.com/2014/10/let-me-love-you), so instead of silently resenting my more traditionally beautiful friends I think I may reach out for some help and communal experimenting instead 🙂 resources are definitely welcome.
“(I would also be happy if Facebook would stop asking me to tag myself as one of my Korean friends. #alllooksame)”
OMFG Facebook.
I keep seeing that “But tech is 70% white AND asians, it’s totally diverse!” argument a lot lately, and just, I don’t even know where to start with on that. LIke yes, Asians experience racism, but it’s completely different from how other races do. And there’s such a huge difference in access to tech for Asians than there is for black people.
Also they’re still all dudes.
The whole point of the discussion is to acknowledge that Asians do contribute to diversity in tech. And, no, racism against Asians isn’t completely different from other races. The model minority myth ignores the racism that Asians have faced and continue to face.
That was poorly worded, but what I mean is that racism and its effects are not always the same across all races, not that Asians and Asian Americans never experience it.
The really curious thing about Asians and Asian Americans in tech that I haven’t seen fully explored yet* is that although Asians are the most visible minority in the field, they get paid less than their (rare) Black counterparts. Both are still getting paid more on average than their Latino counterparts, if memory serves me right, so it’s just a big clusterfuck of WTF all around. It pretty much implies: less scary (to white tech males) but their work is also worth less.
*admittedly, I haven’t been actively looking, so take that as you’d like
Divide and conquer? If the people in charge play off tensions between different ethnic groups over payment, perhaps the the lack of minorities in the executive suites will fade into the background?
I think it’s an interesting illumination of the role that Asians play in our race structure/hierarchy in the US. They’re the model minority, so people are willing to hire them, but they’re not white, so people will point to them as proof that they aren’t discriminating. Which completely ignores the fact that stereotypes and assumptions about how all Asians are good at math/computers/science might consciously or unconsciously affect hiring practices (as well as admissions practices and teaching behaviors in earlier grades).
Yes, Asians contribute to diversity in tech, and yes, it is good to acknowledge that “Asian” is an incredibly broad term that lumps together very diverse ethnicities. But it’s also good to point out that hiring members of a minority believed to be good at what it is you are doing is not the same as actively pursuing real diversity, nor does having large representation from one minority mean you shouldn’t seek out representation from other minorities.
Ugh, eye makeup is the WORST. One of my eyes is a double-lid, and one is a monolid, so I pretty much never do eye makeup ever if I can help it. Going to makeup counters with my mom as a young teen was awful because the clueless white girl behind the counter would try something and my mom would just say “no, that doesn’t work, don’t try it” because it was clearly not made to work on a face like mine.
Yep, I’m another one in the eye makeup is clearly NOT FOR ME group. I have hooded lids, so eyeshadow is just not visible at all. Growing up, I thought my eyes were wrong, it didn’t occur to me that straying from the instructions in the teen magazines was ok.
More solidarity at the makeup counter. Ballet makeup was especially challenging – yes, it’s supposed to be exaggerated and go beyond the “normal” eyelid fold, but if that’s not visible, where exactly is it supposed to go?
This past year my monolids decided to suddenly change to one monolid and one double lid, and now most of the time I’ve got two double lids. It’s annoying and confusing and I wish our eyelids weren’t so weirdly politicized, because otherwise we probably wouldn’t give our odd ones a second thought…
Not to burst in like the Kool-Aid man, but I know of a tool that might help!
http://www.savvyist.com/beauty-guru
You can put in your skin shade/type, eye and hair color and eye type (hooded, semi-hooded, demilids, one monolid and monolids) and out will come beauty bloggers that match the info you put in!
No frickin way.
Seriously, I thought I was the only one in the world.
And to make things weirder, sometimes I wake up and my double lid eye is just like nah, going into hiding today. (Usually if I haven’t had much sleep or have had hayfever and itchy eyes.) And if I’ve been crying lots sometimes that artifically gives me double lids on both eyes, but that never lasts.
/end rant
YEP. I have monolids, and learning eye makeup was…a process (i had a distinct period where I particularly resembled a racoon). But I’m glad about the array of monolid makeup bloggers that has popped up on youtube.
This is a really interesting conversation, thank you Sarah and Nicole.
Apropos of not much, this made me want to plug Banana in a Nutshell , a brilliant documentary by Roseanne Liang, a Chinese New Zealander, which is funny and interesting, and she is just plain awesome. It follows her trying to get her Chinese parents and her white boyfriend on the same page. I don’t know how much exposure her film got outside of NZ, anyway, sorry for derailing.
It really is wonderful. I cried watching it. (My white now-husband was like, eh.)
Plus, NZ pride 🙂
Oh, NZ pride all the way! Hello to a fellow Kiwi – I just clicked over to your blog, and it seems we read a similar assortment of internet things. I think I’ll have to work my way through your back catalogue a bit (if that’s not too creepy!).
I don’t think I cried exactly, but there was definitely some welling up. Just looking up the title of that, I’ve found out she’s got a webseries set in Auckland going at the moment, Flat 3. I’ve only seen the first episode, but it’s good so far. Makes me a bit homesick though.
“One quality that’s a really bad indication is a CEO with a strong foreign accent. I’m not sure why.”
It’s amazing to me that people with all the money in the world apparently can’t see their way to hiring a highly-paid PR consultant who will tell them to stop saying shit like this.
And the idea that not having gotten rid of your thick accent is somehow a sign of foolishness or laziness.
(I’m also curious to know if that guy speaks any other languages with any degree of fluency, and what his accent is like in them if he does).
Oh man, taking notes during this conversation!
Paul Graham sounds like he’s under the spell of racism without knowing it, which is hilarious (“LOL why do I prefer white guys I dunno”) but also deeply disturbing. You don’t even know you’re being racist!! The calls are coming from inside the house!!!
“Asian Americans might be Whiz Kids, but they just don’t have enough “personality” to make it into the upper echelons of management, or the ranks of founders, or venture capitalists.” –> this is a great point, and one I find ties into the idea of people of color not being creative. I’ve discussed this with my brown & Asian American friends but it’s the idea that PoCs can’t have the weird crazy artistic souls that white people have unless it’s tied to their race. They can’t play cricket or martial arts or whatever without it being a race thing. They can’t paint or draw without it only being anime or ancient-art related or dragons or whatever. They can’t play music unless it’s classical and tied to their “Whiz kid” status. We also can’t be weirdos unless that weirdness is coupled with foreignness and accents. Meanwhile that white guy with his plastic bag is philosophical gold.
“it’s the idea that PoCs can’t have the weird crazy artistic souls that white people have unless it’s tied to their race”
OMG this is so true. I think it’s also behind some of the terrible treatment POCs get in mental health contexts.
Also, anyone sick of the liberal media touting diversity by featuring guest POC columnists, yet the newsroom’s actual staff is probably 95% white?
Sure, diversity when it is convenient for you…
Let me add that corporate businesses, which tend to be more conservative than liberal media, have way more diverse staff than the media does. Of course, corporate businesses have access to way more applicants since the media business isn’t nearly as big, but… there’s a diverse amount of people who are in the media, and they don’t get nearly amount of FT jobs as white people do. The media talks the talk but doesn’t walk it!
For stats on diversity in corporate America… http://www.diversityinc.com/the-diversityinc-top-…
Many Big Four accounting firms and government contractors — all required to adhere to affirmative action policies to combat systematic racism. Maybe liberal media can adopt an affirmative action policy!
Also, studies have shown that diversity helps business productivity, and having an all-white staff hinders growth.
It’s certainly better than the way the conservative media touts diversity by bashing immigrants of all colors, even if they’ve been here for generations, and by having a newsroom staff including both naturally blond people and people who dye their hair blond.
Thinking back, for a time, I was quite possibly the only journo at my news org for who wasn’t white and wasn’t on an ethnic affairs beat.
My comment was getting long so I wanted to split it into two threads, hope that’s okay.
The whole plastic surgery thing, and most beauty articles for PoCs, especially written by white people, are just basically concern-trolling people of color. Maybe Asian Americans get it more for beauty being it’s a story that can be used outside the model minority myth. (Indian Americans get some of it with skin-lightening creams).
Oh, also! “But there’s something to be said about how the entire cosmetics/beauty industry is set up to accommodate Western beauty ideals.” –> Yes! One thing I find interesting about Western beauty ideals is in terms of ethnicity, no one can win. I have really long dark eyelashes. Most white people need mascara for those kind of eyelashes (someone on the Billfold discussed paying $96 to get her eyelashes tinted and I was like “but where’s the after pic–…oh.”)
But that same hair thickness is why I get, like, five o clock shadow on my legs when I shave., which is not part of the Western beauty ideal at all. There’re also more, like how hair straightness is important to the point that my white friends will used Asian chemical treatments.
I just wanted to say that the “conversation” format articles are always spot-on, and this is no exception.
I agree it’s the perfect format to talk about these issues — I wasn’t sure it would work, but it did! I think it allowed us to write for each other first (even though we obviously knew other people would be reading eventually!), and so there was no censoring or explaining or equivocating. And then somehow we talked ourselves through and around some of the problems that frustrated us and inspired the discussion in the first place (i.e., how to write about these issues for a wide audience without ending up with a 101 article?). I’m converted! More discussions!!
It really does feel like the “Western beauty ideal” is a conglomeration of a bunch of random physical characteristics plucked out in isolation, so not only is the “ideal” impossible to attain, but the characteristics are only acceptable in the context of whiteness.
I’m not sure if that makes sense, but regardless, thank you Sarah and Nicole for this incredibly interesting and thought-provoking piece, and thank you Sulagna for your comments.
Thank you so much for this. Lots to think about. As someone who’s gotten the “your babies will be so beautiful” way too many times…and now that the baby actually exists have to grit my teeth through “what an exotic-looking little girl!” for the next forever…reading this stuff is so cathartic. I feel like being the white-ish mom of a multiracial child just means I am left out of the conversations I need to be having to help her in this world, pretty much.
I have to admit that not until today reading that NY Magazine article did I realize that my entire Armenian family’s nose jobs counted as “ethnic plastic surgery”. But of course they do. I always suspected my mom was adopted or something because she didn’t look like any of her relatives (she never had the surgery) until I saw some pics of my pre-op aunts and grandma. Mindblowing moment for a ten-year-old.
Just my two cents, but speaking as a parent of multiracial kids: don’t feel like you always have to grin and bear those comments about your “exotic” kids. Because as annoying as they are when they’re babies, it’s worse when they are old enough to overhear and then ask you what the strangers meant. :/
Fair point. Mine is 18 months now so not quite old enough to worry about, but I guess I better grow a pair pretty soon. Sigh!
It’s hard, and you can’t always say something, but I’ve dealt with this BS for long enough that I have very low tolerance. If people want to say something to/about my kids they better THINK.
It’s so complicated in part because a lot of the times it’s Asian people (older ladies in particular) making these comments and I’m like man, where do I, an apparently lily-white person, get off telling these aunties just trying to be nice that what they’re saying is racist? I wish there was a pamphlet I could hand ’em or something cause it seems like there’s just way too much to say, you know?
BTW I just clicked your link and my kid is not the EXACT same model-UN ethnic mix as yours but waaay closer than most kids I meet. Well met, Nikki, and thanks again for the article. If you have any pamphlet recs, send them my way 🙂
People really love to make other people “exotic”. I am white and I have brown hair and blue eyes and people have expressed that they’re very pretty eyes to me a lot (They are! I’m glad I have em!). But the strange effect of my eyes is that people always want me to be more non-american than I am. I’ve noticed since I reached adulthood people of all races (mostly men, of course) will be like, “where are you from? Are you European? what are your parents?” etc or they’ll give me a look and be like, “are you french? are you german? are you russian? are you swedish?” I’m Rhode Islandish. My european ancestors were Scottish, French Hugenot, and Azorean Portuguese. I’m a white chick with a similar color palette to a maggie gyllenhaal. I think I might also have a slightly strange accent which is slightly un-placeable.
Anyway what I’m saying in a long self-involved way is that being just ever so slightly “hard to place” has exposed me to the fact that people REALLY REALLY want to place you. No one is ever happy when I say, oh just from the US, I dunno, my dad has blue eyes…. I’ve never even BEEN TO EUROPE. Then its like, I’m a jerk I didn’t play the game with them.
My sense is that when people do this this they really want, especially with women, to pat themselves on the back for discerning your special unique-ness. Like what is “attractive” about mixed race kids is actually,seeing an attractive kid and noticing some unexpected feature that doesn’t match the box you put their race into. And you walked past 20 other kids who have some other mix and didn’t care, but now you are fucking sherlock holmes right here and hey did you know your kid is so strange, but in a good approved way?
I never before today thought about strong a desire is to figure out how the features place back to “non-america” or trace how america made two features collide, and how that is normal, but made exotic. Anything unplaceable as a straight marker of an understandable race pre-set is worthy of comment and detection for approval or not.
It should be acknowledged somewhere here in the comments that Nicole Cliffe is awesome for asking us to write this up. It would not have occurred to us otherwise; we would’ve just kept tweeting endlessly at each other and maybe five of our overlapping Asian Twitter friends would have read it. So: THANK YOU NICOLE for making space for this conversation, not crying when you saw how long it ended up, and being the first boss who has ever asked me to say MORE about racism.
nikki could you please do more to subvert the dominant paradigm thanks
(never give away yr genius for free on twitter)
thanks for the conversation. I would use two words to describe the current Asian American oppression experience:
“invisible” and “nonthreatening”
This was really interesting, and also not as long as I thought it would be! (Given that there were four ‘pages’, but perhaps that’s just because it was so very interesting).
The Handsome Sidekick and I were just having a conversation about how we, living in Australia, see the conversation about race in the US. While I’ve got a lot of US online friends and we watch a bit of US television and satire, obviously our impressions are not the same as what goes on in the country… but I mentioned that whenever there is a conversation about race, it is almost always about black-white racism. In particular (when we were talking), I was wondering why Native American voices are so underrepresented when it comes to discussions on racism. Quite possibly, the conversations are happening, but over here on the other side of the world, we just don’t hear them.
Yes, being from NZ we definitely notice the lack of talk about indigenous people in other countries. Obviously we have our fair share of issues with that here, but comparatively things here seem … better?
Don’t get me wrong, Australia’s record on human rights, especially when it comes to the treatment of indigenous peoples, is pretty appalling. I would have a hard time judging whether other countries like the US and NZ do it better, considering I’ve not visited either. On the other hand, from what I have heard, talking to NZers who live here, there is at least token, if not actual, acknowledgement of Maori rights, some recognition politically. Here, well. It kind of breaks my heart. Yes, better than it was. Still not very awesome at all, though.
Can’t answer your questions or address your musing on which countries are doing racism and genocide better/worse but INCITE! does work for native rights in the US, please consider donating!
http://www.incite-national.org/page/donate-incite
This post rocked my world with its honesty and nuance. There are so many points to take in and learn from. This can hardly be shared widely enough. Thank you, all (including comments) for one of the best discussions on race in America I have seen in a long time.
Fantastic breakdown of the Time magazine article, which was, as you said, not *bad* per say, but felt really limited. I even feel the same about AHP’s article on Anna May Wong, which was fine and I bet great for her usual audience, but as someone steeped in Asian American Studies, it felt . . . expected. Too be honest, though, as you say, “fine” is more than we can expect from a lot of coverage of AA issues. Does everyone remember that article from a few years back by that Yang guy that everyone was frothing about?
That thing you said about “everyone thinking we look alike” and the plastic surgery and the Model Minority. . .so many good things here today. So many.
Which article from a few years back? Was it by Jeff Yang?
I LOVED that Anna May Wong essay, read it twice right in a row — you’re right that the stereotypes she ran up against and how those played out in her career were not surprising at all, but it was great to see it all pulled together in one place and within the context of classic film history.
Hey Nikki! Yeah, the Anna May Wong essay is great, and I know AHP’s column for that is for lay audiences, but I guess I’ve read too much film scholarship on Wong to be that impressed, but I love AHP and I’m glad she’s showing off Anna May Wong (and Shanghai Express) to the world.
I’m talking Paper Tigers by Wesley Yang which annoyed me mainly because as a Colorlines article put it, he seems to be buying white male supremacy and arrggggghhhhh. . . http://nymag.com/news/features/asian-americans-20…
Right, THAT GUY. I must have managed to block it from my memory or something.
I was a Asian American student activist back in 1987 and am now a member of the Unitarian Universalist Association and a member of DRUUMM (Diverse and Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries) and an atheist too. This is a good write up, but sadly, these same issues I fought against back in 1987, are still prevalent today. Even Jack Linshi’s Time article (“The Real Problem When It Comes to Diversity and Asian-Americans”) is still evident that institutional racism still exist. How? Read the headline. Read the body of the story. No it’s not blatant racism but the fact that a compound adjective and not a noun is used, many consider this improper English and yes, prejudice is still alive and kicking.
We are still the Model Minority and people actually believe what Nakasone said: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-09-24/new…
TOKYO — The Japanese government, still mending diplomatic fences over controversial statements by its former education minister, was forced Wednesday to defend remarks attributed to Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone that blacks and Hispanics were responsible for a lower level of intelligence in the U.S.
“Since there are black people, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in the United States, its level of intelligence is lower on the average,“ three nationally circulated Japanese newspapers quoted Nakasone as saying.
Even to this day. Honestly? I am horrible at math. English is my forte (now I’m typing French) and I enjoy blogging and writing. I also submitted a book proposal about being a PoC and hopefully, the publisher will accept our work. Yet one glance at Asian Americans and you don’t see a leading man who can attract women, because, most directors/producers think that Asian Americans are not sexy. We are either: cooks, cops, martial artists or even a criminal, but never the leading man. Sure Dean Cain (a happa) was Superman, but name me one Asian American in a drama on prime time T.V. Can’t, because realistically, we are typecast as sidekicks or second string in Hollywood.
Going back to 1987, I thought in 2014, things would change. Nothing much changed for Asian Americans and since 9/11, Asian Americans are now victims of hatred: Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, India and so forth are now terrorists. The hatred these folks are facing, my people felt in the late 19th century, after December 7 and today, as we are left out in the proverbial cold, because, we’re not sexy enough…imagine that, Kung Fu with David Carradine? He was portrayed as half Chinese and white. When Kwai Chang Cain was burning the dragon and Tiger on his arm by lifting the pot full of hot charcoal, on a big screen, you can see tape on the side of his face stretching his eyes.
The original Kung Fu? Was Bruce Lee…it was his idea, but they thought he would not been a good actor
So to quote Rush:
Plus ça change
Plus c’est la même chose
The more things change
The more they stay the same
I entirely agree with you as a young blogger who tends to focus on AAPI issues, etc., I will say one thing is making me moderately hopeful in the TV atmosphere: John Cho is the romantic lead opposite Karen Gillan in Selfie, so while I’m not holding my breath for a wave of AAPI leads in TV and films, there’s him and Daniel Dae Kim and that new sitcom (which I know isn’t uncontroversial, but it’s still an entirely AAPI cast!) so who knows?
So now we wait…and wait and wait and wait. I ain’t holding my breath. John Cho and Daniel Dae Kim…two. We need to start an Asian American/Pacific Islander coalition to get our people in the media.
This is amazing, thank you for this! I have to read it again.
In my case, I’m a mixed kid from mixed parents (Spanish-Scot and Japanese-Spanish-Filipino) and I’ve spent my teenage years in the Philippines. My parents have no plans of moving on, even though they can ask to be reassigned at work, and my Scottish gran insisted that it would be better for Dad’s family. I don’t even know, maybe it’s because 3/4 of said family are POCs whose color fall somewhere between white-pale and light tan, and in a country with whitening billboards all over city highways, we’re very lucky.
(I have serious uneven skin coloring on both upper limbs: more tan starting at a few inches above the elbow due to years of pretending as a treasure-hunter in our school grounds. I’m keeping it, no matter what the adverts say.)
People also call my brother and I very pretty (which I now doubt) and keep saying (seriously, this was also in a talk show) that mixed kids are “world class.” Dude, for all you know we’re dirtbags or something.
Great article and format as well! A quick question for the GLBTI Asian Americans here- my former partner was Japanese and I found that the degree of racism in the gay community here in Australia was quite shocking.
It ranged from the “no fats, femmes, or Asians” in contact ads, to people asking if I was a bit desperate, dating an Asian guy, plus the assumption that he was looking for a sugar daddy ( he earned more than me and was only slightly younger).
How does this compare to the experience of Asian Americans?
this is just one essay, Glen, but Joel Kim Booster actually wrote about this issue for The Toast earlier this year.
Thanks for that, missed it before!
There are also like a million other articles on the Interwebs about this subject.
I'm guessing he read that thing on The Toast about how there are millions of readers.
Oh my god guys this was such a good article. I love this: ‘Let’s be real, WHITE PEOPLE: THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU is something that should really make its way into more articles on race.’ Thank you so much.
thanks, L_Bear. I think it could be a nice t-shirt too.
thanks, L_Bear. I think it could be a nice t-shirt too.
I bahleeted (we both like Strong Bad, huh?) because I thought Mallory wanted me to leave, and I wanted to respect her ownership of her space, and the Toast broadly.
It has been clarified to me that a general injunction to leave was not the case broadly, but I’ll refrain from further discourse on this thread. Cheers.
(Fwiw Pear, I’m POC too.)
I bahleeted (we both like Strong Bad, huh?) because I thought Mallory wanted me to leave, and I wanted to respect her ownership of her space, and the Toast broadly.
It has been clarified to me that a general injunction to leave was not the case broadly, but I'll refrain from further discourse on this thread. Cheers.
(Fwiw Pear, I'm POC too.)
very beautiful and educational , thanks