Via Angry Asian Man......
According to new survey data release over the weekend for the Bullying Prevention Summit, 54 percent of Asian American teenagers said they were bullied in the classroom -- a figure waaaaay above the percentages of other groups.I would be surprised if anyone is surprised by this. As I've stated in several posts, racially inflected harassment of Asian-American children is an integral aspect of the mainstream American growth experience - it is inherent in the American identity.
The reason is that American culture promotes the harassment and denigration of Asian people as a normative and casual aspect of their self-image. Many, if not most, of America's cultural representations of Asian people are likely to involve glamourous, beautiful, and powerful, white or (ever more frequently these days) black characters acting out the American dream of belittling or, even more popularly, crushing, the Asian. But it's not only dramatic re-enactments of anti-Asian genocidal fantasies where negative attitudes towards Asians are propagated. Many influential and popular celebs and politicians help in the normalization of anti-Asian harassment through their mockery of Asian racial characteristics or cultures.
This should give us an idea of the extent of the problem of anti-Asian racism in schools. American culture models anti-Asian attitudes that can only lead to destructive behaviour towards Asian people. This is because it is commonplace for the role-models of mainstream America to exhibit destructive anti-Asian attitudes, both within and outside of the context of their work. It can therefore be said that this aspect American culture itself is a form of racial harassment.
The belief that the Asian minority prospers free of racism is a proposition that is belied by the phenomenon of high prevelance anti-Asian school racism. There is little reason to believe that mainstream American children who grow up in an atmosphere of normalized anti-Asian racism, will somehow mature into unconditioned individuals, free of anti-Asian prejudice. On the contrary, it is more likely that those who are exposed to this type of attitude (which might well be most Americans) will maintain these attitudes in adulthood. No aspect of American culture teaches them otherwise.
More here.
We need more mentors and rolemodels. there simply arent enough asian americans who want to be mentors. most are doing business, etc.
ReplyDeleteits the typical asian attitude of fend for yourself. care for yourself. self self self.
its one thing to be the 'quiet unnassuming asian' but apart from the confucious peaceloving nature, another part of it is that asians need to stop being selfish.
yes its a generalisation but when you see so many focusing on themselves and then whinging and being brought up to 'deal with it'
how do we deal with it?
there are a few asian american volunteers who maybe take part time helping kids of multiethnic origins or white but where are the ASIAN MENTORS for ASIAN KIDS?
answer that one, and you will have the solution to improve asian american culture.
we are too selfish. and we hate ourselves too much. because if we didnt, we'd be helping other asians and not yakking about it from a distance on blogs.
theres no such thing as the perfect leader but you can only know by taking action. unfortunately the only action most asians know is to help themselves and not others.
truly, asians dont give a fuck about each other. its why we have such a superficial culture.
Anon
ReplyDeleteWe have role-models but we just don't seem to like the ones we have! People who succeed in business have the potential to become good role-models because they have to deal with the same kind of things that pertain to race as we do. There's a lot to be learned from that.
We have big brothers, uncles, and fathers all of whom could be rich sources for modelling the qualities we appreciate.
We have role-models, we just don't have famous role-models and it is the craving of famous role-models that is problematic because they only really provide us with watered-down caricatures of the qualities we deem positive whilst it is the actual Asian men around us who struggle with stereotyping and racism who have qualities that enable them to endure and succeed even.
We have our priorities wrong - we just don't appreciate the role-models that are available to us.