# data[].attributes.headline
The Culture Canard of the Model Minority Myth: how racial gaps in academics aren’t due to cultural pathology

# data[].attributes.subject
The Culture Canard of the Model Minority Myth: how racial gaps in academics aren’t due to cultural pathology

# data[].attributes.body
This is so relevant to a lot of themes we touched on in class (i.e. the Model Minority Myth and interethnic solidarity). It deconstructs the Model Minority Myth and addresses how Asian Americans also internalize it to perpetuate anti-Blackness.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This past week, Bill O'Reilly was his usual raging asshole self when he set out on his Fox News show "The O'Reilly Factor" to debunk the notion of White privilege. The essence of his argument? Asian Americans are doing great socioeconomically even though we are not White. Therefore, racism must not really exist, and the root of the problem for African Americans must be a cultural pathology.

To bolster his argument, O'Reilly pointed to racial disparities between Blacks, Whites and Asians in graduation rates, unemployment rates and median family income to conclude that African Americans have essentially invented a mythological White privilege as an attempt to avoid taking "personal responsibility". O'Reilly argued:

Just 13 percent of Asian children live in single parent homes compared to a whopping 55 percent for blacks and 21 percent for whites. So, there you go. That is why Asian Americans, who often have to overcome a language barrier, are succeeding far more than African-Americans and even more than white Americans. Their families are intact and education is paramount.

In essence, Papa Bear provides a textbook example of Asian Americans used as the wedge minority by the White mainstream to berate African Americans (and implicitly other academically disenfranchised minority groups) for not bootstrapping their way to socioeconomic success. It can't be racism; it must be some deficiency in Black culture to blame, right? After all, the Asians can do it, why can't the Blacks?

That a (White) conservative pundit would use the Model Minority Myth to insinuate a Black cultural pathology is nothing new. The Model Minority Myth - which, let us remember, is a myth - was invented for this explicit purpose: its first appearance in the American political zeitgeist was in a 1960's New York Times Magazine article ("Success story: Japanese American style") as a reference to Japanese American immigrants who overcame discrimination through alleged "perseverance", in stated contrast to African Americans who were focused on overcoming discrimination through political action (i.e. the Civil Rights Movement). In other words, the Model Minority Myth has always been a fiction invented by Whiteness and has always been used as a cudgel to denigrate, belittle, or dismiss African American efforts to agitate for political equality, while simultaneously appropriating and limiting the roles that Asian Americans can politically inhabit.

The Model Minority Myth is an overt and potent tool of white supremacy used to justify structural racism against virtually all communities of colour (including Asian Americans). For many of us who identify as descendants of the politicized Asian American Movement, dismantling the Model Minority Myth has been of tantamount importance.

Thus, it comes as a surprise when I come across Asian Americans who would not only internalize the myth of the Asian American model minority as articulated by the likes of Bill O'Reilly, but who actually vocally take up its anti-Black logic as their standard. Earlier this month, I invited blogger Byron Wong ( BigWOWO.com) onto the Reappropriate podcast to discuss affirmative action; over the course of that conversation and through later comments, Byron blamed cultural differences between Black and Asian communities for observed racial disparities on commonly used tests for college aptitude like the SATs. That perspective has been taken up on his site by both Byron and several of his regular (self-identified Asian American) readers: in a lengthy post and subsequent comment thread, Byron argues that Asians are culturally predisposed to academic pursuits (Blacks, he argues, are culturally predisposed to athletic achievement) and that African Americans should learn how to Tiger parent from Asians to correct the racial disparities in academics.

Another who identifies as Chinesemom puts it more bluntly when she writes:

I don't think money can do much for African Americans. It is quite clear to me that their problem is the culture. If their culture doesn't change, they will be stuck here forever.

No Chinese parents would claim their son a "good boy" if the kid were like Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin, we would be ashamed of raising that kind of thugs, even the killing of them may not be justified.

Both Bill O'Reilly and - disappointingly - several BigWOWO readers have bought into the Model Minority Myth hook-line-and-sinker. They espouse the tired canard of Asian American cultural exceptionalism, and in so doing join arms with Bill O'Reilly to reinforce the damaging effects of the Model Minority Myth in perpetuating anti-Black and anti-Asian racism in today's America.

Don't get me wrong: I understand that the Model Minority Myth is deeply flattering, which forms the basis for its appeal for some Asian Americans. People love to buy into a good story about their own racial or cultural superiority, as has been aptly and repeatedly demonstrated throughout human history. The problem, of course, is that the Model Minority Myth is also almost entirely fiction (a fact that is unlikely to sway partisan defenders of the Myth, who aren't particularly interested in facts to begin with). The facts reveal that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders aren't better (or worse) than anyone else; like any community made up of different kinds of people, we are simply people.

First, the Model Minority Myth focuses on our success stories while it simply ignores data showing where Asian Americans are struggling, even in the aggregate. Bill O'Reilly cites Labour Department statistics showing low unemployment rates in the Asian American community; he fails to note that while our short-term unemployment rates are low, the same data show that chronic unemployment rates for Asian Americans are highest of all racial groups - and similar to that of Black American jobseekers. O'Reilly is unaware, it seems, of obstacles barring Asian Americans from advancing within their chosen careers - an effect known as the "bamboo ceiling" - which made headlines this week with the revelation that Asian Americans are being excluded from the top positions even in Silicon Valley tech companies where we are otherwise well-represented. And while O'Reilly shows the high median family income of Asian Americans in the aggregate, Papa Bear doesn't bother to inform his viewer that our wealth gap is also the largest for any racial or ethnic group: some ethnicities have extremely high median family incomes, while others fall far short of the national average. Regionally, Asian American poverty is extremely high, as in San Francisco's Chinatown area, where Chinese American residents are forced to pack entire families into single-resident dwellings, and limited healthcare access have resulted in rampant chronic disease.

In assuming a common and exceptional Asian culture of bootstrapped success, the Model Minority Myth simply fails to take into account the pan-ethnic (and indeed pan-racial) nature of the Asian American & Pacific Islander identity, which includes multiple subgroups who appear indistinguishable with regard to some socioeconomic metrics from Black, Latino and Native groups. For some Southeast Asian American or Pacific Islander groups, college acceptance and matriculation rates are markedly lower, while unemployment, poverty, and incarceration rates are distressingly high. For example, while as many as 70% of South Asian Americans hold a bachelor's degree, that rate is a mere 26% for Vietnamese Americans and less than 15% for Laotian, Cambodian and Hmong Americans. The Model Minority Myth simply papers over these ethnic differences in achievement in its assertion of a universal Asian American culture predisposed to better book-learning.

The issues are, as New York Times columnist Charles Blow points out, simply more complicated than the oversimplified Culture Canard would assert. The Culture Canard - which boils all success and failure down to cultural facets - ignores far too many of the mitigating socioeconomic factors that mountains of scientific evidence demonstrate as also significant in determining student success. Charles Blow writes, for example, about the potency of America's immigration system in filtering America's Asian immigrants. Blow cites both Pew and Colorlines in writing:

A 2012 Pew Research report entitled "The Rise of Asian Americans" found:

"Large-scale immigration from Asia did not take off until the passage of the landmark Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Over the decades, this modern wave of immigrants from Asia has increasingly become more skilled and educated. Today, recent arrivals from Asia are nearly twice as likely as those who came three decades ago to have a college degree, and many go into high-paying fields such as science, engineering, medicine and finance. This evolution has been spurred by changes in U.S. immigration policies and labor markets; by political liberalization and economic growth in the sending countries; and by the forces of globalization in an ever-more digitally interconnected world."

Following the publication of the Pew report, the news site Colorlines spoke with Dan Ichinose, director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center's Demographic Research Project, who was critical of some parts of the Pew report, but seemed to echo the role immigration had played. Colorlines put his response this way:

"The more complex and far less exciting explanation for Asian Americans' relatively high rates of education has more to do with immigration policy, which has driven selectivity about who gets to come to the U.S. and who doesn't, said Ichinose."

Because US immigration policy only permits permanent entry through specific visa classes, most Asian Americans are (by definition) selected through this process. Nearly one quarter of Asian immigrants enter as highly-skilled or highly-educated job recruits, an additional one quarter are entering as the immediate family of these recruits. That means by virtue of the effect of US immigration policy on our community alone, nearly half of all new Asian Americans have been selected because they have at least one highly-educated family member and are part of an intact family unit. Meanwhile, immigration is itself an expensive prospect: between the cost of travel and moving, even the most impoverished migrant family must have invested between hundreds and thousands of dollars in their arrival, which results in the selction of families of a certain base earning potential. That means that when amateur sociologists like Bill O'Reilly try to make conclusions about the cultural intelligence of Asians versus Blacks, he is doing so while comparing the general African American population against the achievements of a select group of (economically and educationally) privileged Asian Americans.

The power of the US immigration system in selecting the Asian American community is no better demonstrated than in Minnesota. This week, the state's public school educators are holding an emergency meeting to address the summarized findings of the state's reading, math and science proficiency tests which are administered to grades 3 through 8. As in previous years, the state's White students boast a proficiency rate two to three times higher than Black, Hispanic or - importantly - its Asian American students. Only 29% of Asian American students are proficient in reading, only 19% are proficient in science, and only 41% (and only 30% of South Asian Americans) are proficient in math; all numbers comparable to Black and Hispanic classmates, and far shorter than the achievement of White students. Aside from the obvious overall problems with any public school system that is so patently failing its students of colour, these data are also illuminating in regards to today's post topic: they run at direct odds with the Model Minority Myth.

The Model Minority Myth of Bill O'Reilly's articulation would assert that Minnesota's Asian Americans should, even immersed in a failing school system, be able to leverage our two-parent homes and our Asian cultural predispositions for academia to bootstrap our way at least past the Black and Latino students that Chinesemom would characterize as culturally stagnated. If we are so academically focused in the home, shouldn't Asian American students demonstrate better proficiency than Black or Latino classmates even when Minnesota public schools are languishing? Yet, this is simply not so. In Minnesota, we're not Tiger Parenting our way to success.

The reason for this has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with immigration policy. In Minnesota, the Asian American community is about equally distributed between South Asian, Chinese, Hmong, Laotian, Vietnamese and Thai communities; the latter groups include a higher number of immigrants entering the country as political refugees, meaning that they have not been selected through immigration for economic and educational privilege. And, it is the absence of the effects of that filtering that explains the results: Asian American students are not innately or culturally superior at academic pursuits than their non-White peers, they only appear to be when one fails to recognize how some Asian Americans who have been selected for their privilege are able to fall back on that privilege to buoy their educational outcomes. In Minnesota, absence of economic privilege along with the absence of a supportive public school system combine to reveal that Asian Americans of all ethnicities - like all students of colour - can be vulnerable to academic underachievement when the system fails them. No amount of Tiger parenting will help.

Indeed, the very concept of Tiger Parenting is a contentious one among scholars of this field. Proponents of Asian American cultural supremacy argue that Asian American parents have, in essence, cracked the secret of scholastic success, citing the parenting style codified by Amy Chua's infamous book. This form of strict parenting is, argues Byron Wong, a distinctly common Asian one; it is a style he also asserts is directly responsible for Asian American high achievement on tests like the SATs, and a style that he further asserts is lacking among African American communities. Yet, in a special issue of the American Psychological Association's Asian American Journal on Psychology which was devoted to the Tiger Parenting phenomenon, researcher Su Yeong Kim reported that a minority of Asian American parents (28%) are Tiger parents; most Asian Americans (45%) parent in a more supportive style that eschews the negative reinforcement and high expectations characteristic of the Tiger mother.

Researchers Min Zhou and Jennifer Lee explore how it is a larger "success frame", not the Tiger parents, that sets the expectations of Asian American students in a manner that compels academic pursuits but with significant drawbacks for self-esteem and identity: those Asian American youths who succeed in the classroom are strongly motivated by the feeling of being "more Asian" when they succeed, but those who come up short suffer racial and cultural distance and alienation.

Meanwhile, there is little evidence to support the other side of the argument when it comes to the Culture Canard: that African American families are uninvested in academic pursuits, and that Black youth are more interested in basketball or music than students of other races. Anyone who has spent any time in the Black community knows the emphasis placed by Black parents, Black peers, and even the Black church on higher education for the community's sons and daughters. Since the times of chattel slavery, intellect was not only prioritized, it was a form of abolitionist revolt: slaves secretly taught themselves to read while hiding that skill from their masters. One of the major priorities of Reconstruction was the creation of schools for the education of Black children. Black students go out for the debate championship and enroll in AP classes as readily as do students of other races. The African American community founded HBCU's as a direct response to segregation. Black thinkers are responsible for the traffic light, the cotton gin, and the first open-heart surgery. Black intellectuals - Neil deGrasse Tyson, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell and more (not to mention the president and his equally as accomplished wife) - can be found throughout American life. One study by Charles et al (2007) reveals that upon controlling for income and schooling, Black parents are no less invested in the parenting or education of their children than are parents of other races. Another study showed that Black students are equally if not more intellectually curious than their non-Black peers. The stereotype of the unconcerned Black parent is a (racially charged) re-imagining of the Reagonomics "welfare queen", but bears little resemblance to the realities of contemporary Blackness; anyone who advances this stereotype has spent no time in, and actually engaging with, the Black community.

There is no doubt that a racial disparity exists in quantifiable scores used (often overly broadly) to measure student aptitude. In the aggregate, White and Asian American students earn higher GPAs and outperform on the SATs compared to Black and Latino students; this disparity has been misused by Bill O'Reilly and others to bolster claims of Asian American cultural superiority in the context of the myth of Black cultural pathology. But, as Lee and Zhou point out, many Asian American students cited in such studies are starting from a position of greater privilege and opportunity (while those Asian American students lacking those privileges are lost in the statistical shuffle). Lee writes in an editorial:

Like Chua and Rubenfeld, we found that the children of Chinese immigrants exhibit exceptional educational outcomes that exceed those of other groups, including native-born Anglos. In Los Angeles, 64 percent of Chinese immigrants' children graduated from college, and of this group 22 percent also attained a graduate degree. By contrast, 46 percent of native-born Anglos in L.A. graduated from college, and of this group, just 14 percent attained graduate degrees. Moreover, none of the Chinese Americans in the study dropped out of high school. These figures are impressive but not surprising.

Chinese immigrant parents are the most highly educated in our study. In Los Angeles, more than 60 percent of Chinese immigrant fathers and more than 40 percent of Chinese immigrant mothers have a bachelor's degree or higher. In turn, their children benefit from their parents' human and financial capital, giving them a boost in their quest to get ahead.

This boost - which includes resources such as after-school programs, SAT prep courses and tutoring - isn't limited to the middle class. The children of working-class Chinese parents employed in restaurants and factories benefit from capital and resources that are made widely available to other Chinese Americans.

Lee alludes to, in part, how local communities are still geographically segregated and stratified by race, not class, meaning that working-class Asian Americans may also benefit by living in or near a wealthier predominantly Asian American ethnic enclave and benefit ting from the improved public school quality therein; whereas middle-class Black Americans may still live in poor predominantly Black neighbourhoods, where public schools may lack the taxpayer funds to provide adequate resources for students. Indeed, in a recent data crunch of admissions information from UCLA, I found that lower-income White and Asian American students still had access to better quality high schools than wealthy Black students.

In short, it would be fallacious to ascribe the high educational outcomes of Asian Americans to sheer bootstrapping, as Bill O'Reilly and BigWOWO readers would do; "high-achieving" Asian Americans perform well at least in part due to the specific economic privileges that come with membership in some Asian American ethnic communities, where extra resources are widely available, and even indirectly shared between wealthy and working-class families.

Yet, in his recent post, Byron Wong ignores these mitigating factors and suggests (along with many of his readers) that Asian Americans are scoring up to 400 points higher on average on the SATs than Black students ( a number misapplied from the work of Thomas Espenshade), which he uses to assert the intellectual academic superiority of the Asian American student, and Black cultural and parental pathology. The SATs are a poor measure of student aptitude, and are not designed to measure student merit in the first place. While the SATs are very weak predictors of first-year college performance within the range that they are typically considered by college admissions officers, they are very strong at predicting one thing: the family income of the test-taker. Those who point to racial gaps in the SATs as evidence of Asian American cultural exceptionalism and Black cultural pathology fail to consider some things we already know: 1) that median family income differs across the races, and 2) income seems to matter quite a bit on SAT outcome.

In fact, when one considers the differences in median family income between Asian and Black students, one finds that the racial disparity in average SAT score is for the most part exactly what one would expect if assessing any two students coming from different backgrounds in family income. Given their median income, African American students are not, in fact, underperforming on the SATs at all (which does not mitigate all of the other problems with this exam, but I digress); and they are certainly not underperforming for vaguely defined if wholly racist explanations related to stagnated culture. This is not a culture thing, this is an economics thing.

As for Asian Americans, the only significant deviation in how Asian American students perform in the aggregate on the SATs is their high mean score on the math portion: in the aggregate, Asian Americans score about 75 points higher than one might expect for their income level on the math section alone. This is no small feat to be sure, but the reasons for this very specific high achievement are not clear. Further, it's hard to hang the entire hat of Asian American cultural superiority on a 75 point boost in one section of a three-part SAT exam; and Asian Americans are performing exactly as would be expected based on their median income level on the other two sections.

It is in consideration of minority student performance not just in the absolutes, but in relation to the context of opportunities afforded to them, that lead Lee and Zhou to the perhaps surprising conclusion that it is (in Los Angeles at least) Mexican American youth who are the most successful of all students, not Asian Americans.

At what seems to be the other end of the spectrum, the children of Mexican immigrants had the lowest levels of educational attainment of any of the groups in our study. Only 86 percent graduated from high school - compared with 100 percent of Chinese Americans and 96 percent of native-born Anglos - and only 17 percent graduated from college. But their high school graduation rate was more than double that of their parents, only 40 percent of whom earned diplomas. And, the college graduation rate of Mexican immigrants' children more than doubles that of their fathers (7 percent) and triples that of their mothers (5 percent).

...[T]here is no question that, when we measure success as progress from generation to generation, Mexican Americans come out ahead.

In the end, this isn't really about figuring out which culture is superior to another (hint: none); it's about pulling the focus away from the fiction of the Culture Canard in the first place by debunking the myth that Asians are culturally exceptional and should provide the roadmap for "low-achieving" minorities.

A nearly 4000 word essay on Bill O'Reilly and his Asian American supporters regarding the Culture Canard might seem like much ado about nothing, but this pernicious myth demands analysis, if for no other reason than to point out how unfounded the Model Minority Myth is. But more tangibly, these words do not exist in a vacuum. They are only the latest salvo in America's larger ongoing siege on Blackness - one that has real-world impact in the form of denying political investment in social services' programs that would promote American class mobility, education, and uplift. When Bill O'Reilly demands "personal responsibility", his goal is actually to absolve society of the responsibility of acknowleding our foundation in institutional racism. When Bill O'Reilly blames the racial hustlers, he shifts attention away from the mass incarceration state, educational segregation, economic violence, voter disenfranchisement, and the perpetual maintenance of Black America as a permanent social underclass.

And that's not even getting into the damning effect of the Model Minority Myth on Asian American politics.

As Asian Americans, I believe we have a personal responsibility to not only refuse to support The Model Minority Myth, but to actively dismantle it at all costs. Sure, it might seem fun to have one's culture praised by an "Important White Man" like Bill O'Reilly - is this newfound White acceptance a sign that we've made it?!? - but we must remember: this is nothing more than repackaged insidious anti-Asian and anti-Black racism for a new millennium. Asian Americans are no more culturally superior - or inferior - than any other group of people. We haven't cracked the mystical, magical, Tiger mom secret to getting into Harvard. We are just people - some of us very privileged, others of us less so - who succeed and fail at life just like any other; racial parity is an America that recognizes, not flattens, those imperfections.

As an Asian American, I believe in the solidarity project. I prioritize the uplift of all people of colour, not just other Asian Americans. I have no desire to be embraced by the likes of Bill O'Reilly and used as a weaponized identity against my fellow man. To that end, I want no complicity in the Culture Canard; and, neither should you.
Read More:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Culture Canard of the Model Minority Myth: how racial gaps in academics aren't due to cultural pathology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This past week, Bill O'Reilly was his usual raging asshole self when he set out on his Fox News show "The O'Reilly Factor" to debunk the notion of White privilege. The essen...

# data[].attributes.headline
A sketch that confronts racial stereotypes in America

# data[].attributes.subject
A sketch that confronts racial stereotypes in America

# data[].attributes.body
A great example of how comedy is often used to highlight stereotypes and prejudice. Is the video's main purpose to make people laugh? Is the message it carries discounted by this possibility?

# data[].attributes.body
I love how Shani Mootoo keeps playing with the idea of queerness and gender. This book seems super interesting!!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shani Mootoo-Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab

# data[].attributes.body
This article looks at the backlash expressed by Eddie Huang himself and why the show still offers social nuances that make it worth watching.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Like many pioneering TV series, ABC's "Fresh Off the Boat," a sitcom about a Taiwanese-American family running a Western-themed chophouse in Orlando, Florida, débuted to impossibly high expectations, hand-wringing, and prickly waves of preëmptive backlash. In an unusual twist, this hazing came from the man whose life the show was based on.

In an essay in New York, Eddie Huang, the celebrity chef, Vice TV host, and author of the memoir "Fresh Off the Boat," merrily trash-talked his own collaborators, including a Chinese-American producer, whom he called an "Uncle Chan," and the showrunner, Nahnatchka Khan, an Iranian-American. "What did you buy my book for?" Huang yelled, frustrated that the show had bowdlerized his story, which included whippings by his father, an immigrant restaurant owner. "Just make A Chink' s Life . . . With Free Wonton Soup or Soda." Thousands of words in, Huang tossed out a few lines of praise, but the impression he left wasn't great-if he saw his sitcom as a sellout, who were viewers to disagree?

At the heart of this rant was the question of what makes TV bold: Huang wanted something pungent, like an FX anti-hero dramedy, or like the nineties sitcom "Married with Children," the type of show that would underline (and maybe glamorize) his violent youth, his charismatic dick of a dad, and the roots of Huang's own flamboyant persona. That desire wasn't sheerly egotistical: Huang was eager to push back at the cliché of Asian men as passive, genitally cheated nerds ("the eunuch who can count," as he puts it in the book)-a Long Duk Dong stereotype still visible on shows like CBS's "2 Broke Girls." Huang wanted "Fresh Off the Boat" to "go hard," like his nineties hip-hop heroes. In the process, he was claiming TV's own bad-boy role, the provocateur who shoves authenticity down the throat of The Man. Think Roseanne; think Louis C.K. and Dave Chappelle.

In reality, of course, the bad-boy provocateur very rarely gets final cut on a network family sitcom-it's a genre more prone to compromise than a Senate bill. Even the edgiest shows have limits: Al Bundy never hit Peggy, after all. So it's no surprise that, aesthetically, "Fresh Off the Boat" fits right into ABC's sweet-tempered slate of comedies, which includes the subtly retrograde "Modern Family," the wonderful "The Middle," "The Goldbergs," "Black-ish"-a smart new show that I'll get to in a moment-and the unfortunately bland "Cristela." Like all these shows, "Fresh Off the Boat" is brightly lit, with an A plot and a B plot. The jokes aren't dirty and nobody gets his butt whipped. The parents-patriotic restaurant-manager dad, Louis (Randall Park), and proudly alienated mom, Jessica (the terrific Constance Wu)-love one another. There's even a "Wonder Years"-esque voice-over, performed by Huang, and an ensemble of adorable children. It's a comedy the whole family can watch together-which may be either an insult or a compliment, but is definitely a business plan.

Yet, even in its half-dozen early episodes, those burnt first pancakes of sitcoms, the show has a radical quality, simply because it arrives in a television landscape with few Asian characters, almost none of them protagonists. Khan, the showrunner (who wrote for Seth MacFarlane, and who produced the wicked ABC sitcom "Don't Trust the B-- in Apartment 23"), is her own sort of provocateur, an expert at slipping rude ideas into polite formats. She uses the Asian-American family to reset TV's defaults. The characters aren't the hero's best friends; they're not macho cartoons or eye candy, either, as on some cable dramas I could name. This can be an unpleasantly clinical way to talk: it places the critic in the camp of the bean counters, not the gonzo rapscallions. But simply watching people of color having a private conversation, one that's not primarily about white people, is a huge deal. It changes who the joke is on. "Fresh Off the Boat" is part of a larger movement within television, on shows that include the CW's "Jane the Virgin" and Fox's "Empire"-a trend that's most influential when it creates a hit, not a niche phenomenon.

Reading the book, then watching the show, you get why Huang was frustrated: without a cruel bully for a father, Eddie's taste for hip-hop feels more superficial-in the book, it's an abused kid's catharsis and an identification with black history. But, if the show emphasizes family warmth, that theme is complicated by sharp sociological details: the only black kid in the school calls Eddie a "Chink" and smirks at his hip-hop T-shirt; Jessica grabs every free sample at the supermarket, then gives the employee a hilariously dismissive wave; Louis hires a white host to attract customers ("A nice happy white face, like Bill Pullman," he explains firmly). There's no violence, but there are specific immigrant perspectives, shown through multiple lenses.

In one of Khan's most effective gambits, we see Eddie through his mother's eyes as often as we see her through his. In the book, Jessica is a brazen, mysterious goad to her son; on the show, she's a full character, Eddie's equal in cultural alienation, even if her escape is Stephen King, not the Notorious B.I.G. In one of the most interesting early episodes, mother and son are both drawn to Honey, a trophy wife who lives next door. Eddie sees a hot MILF he can show off to the boys; Jessica sees a kindred spirit who will eat her "stinky tofu" and bond over "Dolores Claiborne"-then pulls away when she realizes that Honey is the town home-wrecker. The show hits every awkward angle of this triangle, including a surreal fantasy sequence in which Eddie, inspired by his hero Ol' Dirty Bastard, sprays Capri Sun on gyrating video vixens. (His mom intrudes, complaining that he's wasting juice, while his father offers the women free samples from the restaurant: "Come on, Fly Girls. Try a rib! Tell a friend.")

In the final scene, at a block party, everyone's loneliness collides, as Eddie gropes Honey, and Jessica sees her neighbor's humiliation. Opening her heart to a fellow-outsider, Jessica seizes the karaoke mike to serenade Honey with an awkward, earnest rendition of "I Will Always Love You." The sequence doesn't "go hard"; it goes soft, quite deliberately. But somehow it still manages to find strangeness within its sentimentality. "Fresh Off the Boat" is unlikely to dismantle the master's house. But it opens a door.

ABC's other new family sitcom, "Black-ish," created by Kenya Barris and Larry Wilmore (who left to do "The Nightly Show," on Comedy Central), has had fifteen episodes, giving it more of a chance to grow than "Fresh Off the Boat"-and in that time the series has transformed from hokey formula into one of the goofiest, most reliably enjoyable comedies around. Early on, the show kept aggressively re-stating its thesis: Andre (Dre), a successful adman, is worried that his four kids aren't black enough. Growing up rich in a white suburb, they don't remember a time before Obama; Andre Junior is a nerd, not a thug. Andre's biracial wife, Rainbow, an anesthesiologist, is less concerned about race. Each week, Dre tries to toughen the kids up, terrified that if they don't get "blacker" he'll have failed as a father.

The problem with the show, initially, was that Andre himself felt so off-putting-childlike and abrasive, a man-baby in the Homer Simpson mode-that it was hard to buy his marriage or his success, let alone his lessons. Rainbow, played by the fantastic Tracee Ellis Ross, was trapped in the gruesome role of wife-as-mommy, the sighing goody-goody. It's hard to even remember that version, though, because, once "Black-ish" settled in, it began, like so many smart sitcoms, a quiet reinvention. Andre got more insightful; Rainbow became a glamorous dork with a temper and her own loose-limbed charisma; the kids clicked, too; and Andre's workplace became a reliably hilarious setting for him to brainstorm about his troubles. It helped that he began to acknowledge his own outsized personality, too, rather than presenting it as interchangeable with authentic urban blackness. "I'm a lot," Andre says, about his parenting. "If they can get past me, they can get past anything."

A funny Valentine's Day episode featured a date night that went downhill-a sitcom chestnut that paid off, miraculously, owing to sharp dialogue and the couple's great chemistry. Andre and Rainbow sniped over his mispronouncing the word as "Valentimes." They revisited a childbirth scenario so awkward that the doctor asked her, "You mean he's actually part of your life? Because plenty of women successfully raise children alone." They argued over whether or not Andre saw Gene Hackman at a roller rink. ("You think everyone is Gene Hackman!" Rainbow fumes.) In the best tradition of the mainstream sitcom, the show felt both new and familiar, giving the show's marriage emotional roots.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"Fresh Off the Boat" and "Black-ish" Reviews

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Emily Nussbaum on two new shows from ABC which succeed as mainstream family sitcoms by slipping rude ideas into a polite format.

# data[].attributes.headline
A Parody of the Age-Old Question "Where are you from?"

# data[].attributes.subject
A Parody of the Age-Old Question "Where are you from?"

# data[].attributes.body
While a humorous video, it still does an excellent job of accurately exhibiting the "origin" questions that many Asian Americans are constantly asked. I believe Professor Bahng shared the story about how her Asian American roommate would always be bombarded with these questions when in fact her great-grandparents had been born in the southern United States. The manner in which the woman turns it around on the 'regular American,' is not only eye-opening, but also very thought-provoking. People ask these questions in an effort to connect with Asian Americans and have a topic of dialogue. But why can't there be a conversation that starts with something other than ethnicity, culture, or cuisine?

# data[].attributes.headline
Something that popped up on NYT today...

# data[].attributes.subject
Something that popped up on NYT today...

# data[].attributes.body
I wonder how might these findings (or perhaps the reporting of these findings in NYT) add to the conversation on racial discrimination

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opinion | When Whites Get a Free Pass (Published 2015)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Special privileges are often more common than conscious bias.

# data[].attributes.body
George Takei talks about his experience with internment during WWII and growing up as a Japanese American. He also tells the story of the 442nd Infantry Regiment, a largely Japanese American unit that served during WWII, while their families were held in internment camps. By the end of the war they were the most decorated unit in U.S. military history.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content.

By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our Privacy Policy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
George Takei: Why I love a country that once betrayed me

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When he was a child, George Takei and his family were forced into an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, as a "security" measure during World War II. 70 years later, Takei looks back at how the camp shaped his surprising, personal definition of patriotism and democracy.

# data[].attributes.body
This video reminds us how diversity at the Oscars is non-existent. It focuses mainly on African-American exclusion but if there was an Asian or Asian-American focus it would be even more depressing. If I just look at the 21st century, I count 4 Asian actors (Ben Kingsley and Shohreh Aghdashloo for „House of Sand and Fog“, Ken Watanabe for „The Last Samurai“ & Rinko Kikuchi for „Babel“) who got nominated. There are 20 acting nomination slots each year, so Asians filled 4 out of 320 slots since 2000. How long will it take to have an Asian or Asian-American woman win Best Actress?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
#OscarsSoWhite isn't just a hashtag. It's a real problem. | By HuffPostFacebook

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
#OscarsSoWhite isn't just a hashtag. It's a real problem.

# data[].attributes.headline
"New Era" for Asian American actors? An optimistic take

# data[].attributes.subject
"New Era" for Asian American actors? An optimistic take

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
February 2015 will go down in history as a great month for Asian Americans in entertainment. For the first time in 20 years, U.S. network television has a sitcom led by an Asian American cast as ABC's Fresh Off The Boat premiered to strong ratings and good reviews. Days later, news came that George Takei's Allegiance musical about Japanese American interment during World War II is making it to Broadway; it will become the first Asian-led Broadway musical in over a decade. And for a proverbial cherry on top, ABC also greenlit a pilot for Dr. Ken - starring Ken Jeong from The Hangover movies and sitcom Community. After years of waiting for greater representation of Asian performers, I hope this wave launches a new era: when Asian Americans can step out of the supporting shadows and into the spotlight as stars.

Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I rarely saw Asian faces on television or in movies - unless they were in Kung Fu Theater martial arts films or in the annual Miss Universe pageant telecasts. That reinforced my keen awareness - as part of a Vietnamese immigrant family in the United States - that I was different. When I looked on screen, I did not find faces that reflected my life experience or inspired me as Asian American role models.

That's why I remember being so excited when Margaret Cho's All American Girl sitcom arrived (coincidentally also on ABC, the network behind Fresh Off The Boat). It was 1994; I was in law school and I was knee-deep in pondering my chances for career succeed once I entered the legal world (a profession which even today still struggles with racial diversity challenges). Margaret Cho's sitcom debuted, and I remember thinking "This is it! This is the moment Asians are finally making it big in America!" Sadly, the series was cancelled after only one season - leaving me and other Asian Americans feeling like our moment arrived and evaporated in an instant.

Since then, we have periodically seen Asian American actors in motion picture and television roles. But except for the occasional Joy Luck Club, Asian faces and storylines have usually been supporting players rather than project leads. Take, for example, The WB network's Charmed - the supernatural series about a trio of witch sisters. I was a big fan of the 1998-2006 series (and still love the re-runs). But I was always baffled about how a show set in San Francisco of all cities, lasting 8 seasons, had no regular Asian American cast member even in any supporting role. Occasionally, Asian American actors appeared for episodes with some Asian theme to the storyline (the Charmed Ones help the Zen Master protect the Dragon Blade!) - but that was it.

Of course, this is not a problem unique to Asian Americans. For all racial minority groups, entertainment projects can still showcase more diversity of actors and storylines. (And of course Hollywood awards shows can still do a better job of recognizing racial minority talent, as we see with this year's #OscarsSoWhite outcry). But Asian Americans have historically received even shorter shrift when it comes to starring roles.

There are certainly signs of improvement - Lucy Liu portrays the key second character in Elementary, Ming-Na Wen is a main cast member in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Mindy Kaling delights as star of The Mindy Project. Significantly, John Cho broke barriers in the short-lived comedy series Selfie because he portrayed the mythical unicorn in Western entertainment: an Asian American man as the romantic lead. Here's a news alert: Asian men can in fact be hip, charming and sexy!

As more Asian faces star in American entertainment projects, they communicate an important message to everyone watching: Asian Americans are capable of playing any role -- not just on camera, but also in life.

We are not just the martial artist, the concubine, or the nefarious villain.

We are not just the foreign exchange student, the nail salon worker, or the quiet math genius.

Asian Americans can be funny and dramatic.

We can be charismatic and romantic.

We are inspirers and leaders.

We are athletes and artists.

We work as lawyers, teachers, law enforcement officers, business owners, and in every other profession you can imagine.

While it may be just for entertainment, Asian American stars will inspire young people to believe that any career, any opportunity and any life is possible for them. And their storylines help break down racial stereotypes by teaching people - of all races - that Asian Americans have a full range of human experiences just like everyone else.

That's why I am rooting for Fresh Off the Boat and Allegiance to achieve long and profitable runs. Their success can pave the way for more Asian Americans - on screen, on stage and in life - to shine as stars.

Your Loyalty Means The World To Us

Support HuffPost
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A New Era for Asian Americans in Starring Roles

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As more Asian faces star in American entertainment projects, they communicate an important message to everyone watching: Asian Americans are capable of playing any role -- not just on camera, but also in life.

# data[].attributes.headline
Interesting short film on Vietnamese diaspora

# data[].attributes.subject
Interesting short film on Vietnamese diaspora

# data[].attributes.body
This is just the trailer

# data[].attributes.body
I'm super obsessed with watching TED talks with authors lately and this one caught my attention

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"Origin Song": lê thi diem thúy at TEDxSitka

# data[].attributes.body
The documentary on Grace Lee got me research on Hegelian Marxism, and I found an interesting read from Marxists.org for philosophy nerds out there like me; Was Marx really Hegelian?

# data[].attributes.headline
For Asian Americans, a changing landscape on college admissions

# data[].attributes.subject
For Asian Americans, a changing landscape on college admissions

# data[].attributes.body
"One parent asked Zell [a college prep counselor] whether it would help to legally change the family name to something more Western-sounding."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
(Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

In a windowless classroom at an Arcadia tutoring center, parents crammed into child-sized desks and dug through their pockets and purses for pens as Ann Lee launches a PowerPoint presentation.

Her primer on college admissions begins with the basics: application deadlines, the relative virtues of the SAT versus the ACT and how many Advanced Placement tests to take.

Then she eases into a potentially incendiary topic - one that many counselors like her have learned they cannot avoid.

"Let's talk about Asians," she says.

Lee's next slide shows three columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark. It uses the term "bonus" to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant's race is worth. She points to the first column.

African Americans received a "bonus" of 230 points, Lee says.

She points to the second column.

"Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points."

The last column draws gasps.

Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points - in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.

"Do Asians need higher test scores? Is it harder for Asians to get into college? The answer is yes," Lee says.

" Zenme keyi," one mother hisses in Chinese. How can this be possible?

College admission season ignites deep anxieties for Asian American families, who spend more than any other demographic on education. At elite universities across the U.S., Asian Americans form a larger share of the student body than they do of the population as a whole. And increasingly they have turned against affirmative action policies that could alter those ratios, and accuse admissions committees of discriminating against Asian American applicants.

That perspective has pitted them against advocates for diversity: More college berths for Asian American students mean fewer for black and Latino students, who are statistically underrepresented at top universities.

But in the San Gabriel Valley's hyper-competitive ethnic Asian communities, arguments for diversity can sometimes fall on deaf ears. For immigrant parents raised in Asia's all-or-nothing test cultures, a good education is not just a measure of success - it's a matter of survival. They see academic achievement as a moral virtue, and families organize their lives around their child's education, moving to the best school districts and paying for tutoring and tennis lessons. An acceptance letter from a prestigious college is often the only acceptable return on an investment that stretches over decades.

Lee is the co-founder of HS2 Academy, a college prep business that assumes that racial bias is a fact of college admissions and counsels students accordingly. At 10 centers across the state, the academy's counselors teach countermeasures to Asian American applicants. The goal, Lee says, is to help prospective college students avoid coming off like another "cookie-cutter Asian."

"Everyone is in orchestra and plays piano," Lee says. "Everyone plays tennis. Everyone wants to be a doctor, and write about immigrating to America. You can't get in with these cliche applications."

::

Like a lot of students at Arcadia High School, Yue Liang plans to apply to University of California campuses and major in engineering - or if her mother wins that argument, pre-med. She excels at math, takes multiple AP courses and volunteers, as does nearly everyone she knows.

Being of Asian descent, the junior says, is "a disadvantage." The problem, she says, is in the numbers.

Asian families flock to the San Gabriel Valley's school districts because they have some of the highest Academic Performance Index scores in the state. But with hundreds of top-performing students at each high school, focusing on a small set of elite institutions, it's easy to get lost in the crowd.

Of the school's 4,000 students, nearly 3,000 are of Asian descent, and like Yue are willing to do whatever it takes to gain entrance to a prestigious university. They will study until they can't remember how to have fun and stuff their schedules with extracurriculars. But there's an important part of their college applications that they can't improve as easily as an SAT score: their ethnicity.

In the San Gabriel Valley, where aspirationally named tutoring centers such as Little Harvard and Ivy League cluster within walking distance of high schools, many of them priced more cheaply than a baby-sitter, it didn't take long for some centers to respond to students' and parents' fears of being edged out of a top school because of some intangible missing quality.

Helping Asian American students, many of whom lead similar lives, requires the embrace of some stereotypes, says Crystal Zell, HS2's assistant director of counseling. They are good at math and bad at writing and aspire to be doctors, engineers or bankers, according to the cliches. She works with her students to identify what's unique about them - and most of the time, that's not their career ambitions or their ethnicity.

"Everyone comes in wanting the same thing," Zell said. "But that's because they don't know about anything else."

If a student wants to be an engineer, she makes sure to show other options. She sends affluent students to volunteer in poor neighborhoods. Branch out from tennis, or chess club, or taekwondo, she tells them. Learn a language other than Chinese. Avoid writing your essay about your parents' journey to America.

Instead of just handing students a violin or a piano and saying pick one, Zell says, HS2 offers them a buffet of interests and hobbies, encouraging students to pick something that excites them.

Lawrence Leonn, 16, is grateful for the help. He doesn't think race or ethnicity should matter, but he believes it will.

"I don't want to be racist or anything," Lawrence said. "Everyone works hard and struggles. But there's this feeling that it's going to be harder for us."

::

Complaints about bias in college admissions have persisted since at least the 1920s, when a Harvard University president tried to cap the number of Jewish students. In November, a group called Students for Fair Admissions filed a suit against Harvard University for admissions policies that allegedly discriminate against Asian Americans. The group cited the 2004 Princeton study and other sources that offer statistics about Asian Americans' test performance.

At the University of Texas at Austin, an affirmative action policy that allows admissions committees to consider the race of prospective applicants has been argued all the way to the Supreme Court. (The policies were upheld by a lower court, but that court's decision was voided by the Supreme Court. Another court upheld the policies and another appeal is pending.)

Those who defend "holistic" admissions policies insist that considering a broader range of variables ensures that all applicants are judged fairly. And the Princeton study Lee refers to has been widely criticized by academics who argue that it relies too heavily on grades and test scores to draw conclusions about racial bias and that the data the study uses are too old to be relevant.

Still, anxiety over racial admissions rates is peaking as cash-crunched public universities increasingly favor high-paying out-of-state and foreign students at the expense of local applicants of every ethnicity. A 2014 bill that would have asked voters to consider restoring race as a factor in admissions to public California colleges and universities sparked multiple public protests and scathing editorials in Chinese newspapers. The bill, Senate Constitutional Amendment 5, was shelved last year.

Lee says that she usually tries to at least mention arguments in favor of diversity at her free college seminars. She mentions how the black student population at UCLA has declined precipitously and how student bodies at elite universities probably shouldn't be 100% of Asian descent. When she looks to see the response, she sees mostly slowly shaking heads.

"It's really hard for me to explain diversity to parents whose only goal is getting their son into Harvard," Lee says.

That same ethic causes parents and students to agonize over which box, if any, to check on the race and nationality section of the application. One parent asked Zell whether it would help to legally change the family name to something more Western-sounding.

Last year, a rumor that Harvard University would stop accepting any more Asian American students from San Marino High School spread like a trending hashtag.

Mollie Beckler, a counselor at San Marino High School, says that Harvard never imposed such a rule. School counselors are continually trying to dispel myths like these, she says, if only in hopes of slightly lowering the huge stress students shoulder because of their intense focus on elite schools.

"The feeling of failure they get from trying to reach such high standards," she said, "is very concerning to us in the counseling world."

Only a few of the San Gabriel Valley's tutoring centers confront the ethnic admissions issue head-on.

Jamie Aviles, a counselor at the ACI Institute, doesn't teach ways to overcome perceived racial bias, she says. But she and many other counselors do agree on at least one thing.

As Aviles puts it: "It sucks to be a kid in the San Gabriel Valley."
frank.shyong@latimes.com ALSO: For a dad stung by stereotypes, 'Fresh Off the Boat' is point of pride UC's enrollment guarantee gives students an education to fall back on China complains SAT may impose American values on its best students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
For Asian Americans, a changing landscape on college admissions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a windowless classroom at an Arcadia tutoring center, parents crammed into child-sized desks and dug through their pockets and purses for pens as Ann Lee launches a PowerPoint presentation.

# data[].attributes.headline
Corporate America: Shifting Demographics and the 'Bamboo Ceiling'

# data[].attributes.subject
Corporate America: Shifting Demographics and the 'Bamboo Ceiling'

# data[].attributes.body
Interview with the author who coined the term that explains recent trends about inequalities in the workplace as functions of culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.

MICHELE NORRIS, Host:

And I'm Michele Norris. This week, we're looking at the shifting demographics in America; and what it means, given those changes, to be considered all-American.

That phrase - all-American - is often used to convey a certain idea. A dictionary definition, for instance, says it's something or someone considered to be typical of the United States, and respected and approved of by Americans; in other words, a seal of approval, top-notch, the best of us.

And that brings us to the next conversation in our series. Recently, New York Magazine published an article called "Paper Tigers: What Happens to all of the Asian-American Overachievers When the Test-Taking Ends?" The "test-taking" in that headline refers to Asian-American students' over-representation in almost every index of achievement in education. And the "what happens" question refers to their under-representation in corporate leadership.

Wesley Yang wrote that article, and he joined us, along with Jane Hyun. She's a leadership strategist and executive coach, who's the author of "Breaking The Bamboo Ceiling."

Yang says the challenge Asian-Americans often face, is when the messages about success they learned at home conflict with the definition of success in the workplace.

WESLEY YANG: In many cases, Asian-Americans - even second-generation or even third-generation Asian-Americans - will come into the workplace with a set of behavioral norms and expectations that they've been trained to meet in their households, or in the ethnic enclave in which they've been raised; that are different than what - the way you're supposed to behave, to be a success in corporate America.

NORRIS: Jane, you're the author of the book "Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling." How common is this across the country?

JANE HYUN: I think the bamboo ceiling is something that's pervasive inside these organizations, the Fortune 500. And I talk about it as individual factors as well as organizational, because I think that there are some cultural nuances that keep Asians from really being perceived as a leader.

NORRIS: Such as?

HYUN: In an organization, you do need to understand how to promote yourself - in a graceful way - to get ahead, and to let people know what you're doing. And I think if you talk to most of the Asian individuals who are working in these organizations, most of them are uncomfortable with that because they didn't grow up with that as something that was valued; the idea that you can actually boast about your accomplishments, and talk about what you've done and really, you know, pitch yourself in a pretty open way.

NORRIS: So have either of you had experiences crashing your own foreheads against that bamboo ceiling?

YANG: I have not. I don't think anything that happened to me had anything to do, career-wise, with my race. But - so no.

HYUN: I have a little story there. When I was early on in my career, I was in a job where I did a lot of spreadsheets and analysis, and I worked it with a team of people. And I noticed that a co-worker - and colleague - of mine would go into my manager's office once in a while to connect informally; engage in banter and discuss a variety of different things, work and personal-related, with him.

And so at the time, I didn't understand why she did that because for me, the message that I got about how to be successful - right - was to put your head down, work hard, and then you'll get rewarded. Somebody will see that you'll do the hard work, right. That was - I didn't know any differently, right. This was a second year inside of a Fortune 500 company.

And so I actually asked my friend - who was my peer - who tended to do this, and said, you know, why do you go in there? You can get a lot more done if you actually spend 20 minutes more at the computer, or finishing up a response to an email. What she said was really interesting to me. She said well, you know, I just go in there to shoot the breeze, to build a relationship with the boss.

And that was the first time I had that a-ha moment of really getting the fact that, you know, you can actually - without being asked to come to the meeting or without scheduling a meeting, you can actually go in unannounced and unscheduled, to have this very informal relationship with a manager. I didn't see that as a possibility because I thought hard work was working alone at your desk.

And so that moment was kind of a turning point for me; to realize wow, you know, there's some cultural - deeply embedded cultural messages, scripts, that I operate under, that maybe I need to understand better so that I know how to work effectively across a variety of different spectrums. And so that really was a turning point for me that helped me in the rest of my career.

NORRIS: Wesley, you said that you haven't had an experience bumping up against the bamboo ceiling. But you write, with great candor, about the assumptions that people might make when they see your face.

YANG: Yes, that's true. One of the main reasons - I included an account of a guy named "Asian Playboy," who teaches Asian men how to project themselves in a way that will be attractive to members of the opposite sex. And he gave this description of this thing called the Asian poker face.

And when he gave that description, everybody in the room burst into laughter. And the example that he gave was: How many people in this room have had this experience where they will be at a party, and a white person will come up to them and say, "Is something the matter? Are you angry?"

And of course, the people weren't angry. They simply had their ordinary Asian faces that were visible to others, and they had this thing called an Asian poker face. And I, in fact, have an Asian poker face. It was very useful...

NORRIS: What does that mean?

YANG: An Asian poker face is - appears to white people to be an expressionless expression that is perceived as being inscrutable - right? - and that many people will read all sorts of wrong emotions into just because they have a different set of norms and expectations.

There's a lot of countries in the world - not just in Asia, but also in Europe - where if you were to go around smiling at people, you would be perceived not as a friendly person but as a crazy one. But the United States has a different expectation. And if you don't meet that expectation, there will - in many cases - be a barrier to trust and acceptance that you will carry around with you for your whole life; on the basis of something that seems so trivial and also, on the basis of something that can be changed.

That was, for me, a really interesting and powerful moment. And discovering what that was, discovering that I had it - and discovering that so long as I had it, my social experiences were going to be not as positive as they ought to have been, or not as positive as they might have been otherwise - was really interesting and ironic and sad and - but also, very helpful to me.

NORRIS: And you write about learning how to smile.

YANG: Yes, I - myself - have not, in fact, learned how to smile. But I do write about a group of people who went through a process of being coached to smile more; and discovering that by doing that, they could help themselves in every aspect of their life.

NORRIS: Thanks to both of you. It's been wonderful to talk to you.

YANG: Thank you.

HYUN: Thank you, it was great to be here.

NORRIS: That's Jane Hyun; she wrote the book "Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling." We also heard from Wesley Yang, a contributing editor for New York Magazine.

Tomorrow, we talk with a man who straddles two races, and we hear how he chooses to identify himself.

BLOCK: I checked more than one box - the black-African-am-Negro box. But the other box that might apply to me is white.

NORRIS: That's tomorrow in our series that explores the evolving term "all-American."

Copyright © 2011 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Michele Norris talks with writer Wesley Yang and business adviser Jane Hyun about the challenges of Asian assimilation - and the challenges of busting stereotypes and the "Bamboo Ceiling."

# data[].attributes.body
I came across this article. Not super academic, but an interesting read.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I am a teenager at the airport. I really want the airport sushi, but I don't want to be that Asian person who, of course, orders sushi and is good at math and speaks with a foreign accent and... The decision is too overwhelming. I grab a nice chicken sandwich instead. I am an undercover Asian.
I spoke Mandarin, looked exactly like the full-blown Chinese teenager I was, and was described as "the whitest Asian girl I have ever met" by the kids at my school.
I was what pop-culture called a banana: yellow on the outside, but white on the inside.
This meant that I had the type of exterior on which people would project a million stereotypes about East Asians.

But, if you were to split me open, I was just another typical "American" girl who said "like" a lot, swooned over 'NSync, ate Pop Rocks (wow, did I just totally give away my age?), and did everything else I could to fit in.

Because I grew up in a community where Asians were rare, it was tough. I got a lot of stares and double takes. People always gawked at my family when we went out, sometimes going as far as to ask where we came from - surely further east than down the street.
As a kid, I knew that the only way I could stop this was to somehow erase the parts of me that were perceived as Asian. I thought that I needed to be white.
But since I couldn't be white, I had to do the next best thing: assimilate into the culture around me. I had to adopt the mainstream American culture as my own.

Yet I was constantly reminded of my Asian-ness. I was " the first Asian person I've met" and " the first Asian girl I've ever dated" for many people.
Damn, I'm your "first Asian girlfriend?" What does that even mean? I'm freaking out because you're my first boyfriend ever, and I have to deal with this shit, too? Do I speak up for myself when you make a racist joke, or do I come off as a Dragon Lady? Do I not speak up, or do I become the blushing geisha?
Ugh, my heart is racing just remembering those feelings.

I was already busy navigating what it meant to actually be in a relationship, and suddenly, I was also assigned to represent Asia (like the whole freaking continent).
The pressure to be both an ambassador for my ethnic group and a "normal" (read: white) teenager was suffocating me.
It was a daily struggle to figure out who I was and how to present myself to the world. That hyphen in Asian-American seemed more like a shaky tight rope, and it felt safer to live undercover than expose myself to the pressure.

I'd like to say that, as a 30-year-old grown ass woman, I am no longer an undercover Asian. But I can't. Even though I know these ridiculous anxieties are harmful to my self-worth, I sometimes still let them rule my decisions. I'm not perfect.
But what I do know is that there's a name for my anxiety: internalized racism. And as soon as I name my oppressor's tool, I can begin to overcome the oppression.
Internalized racism, according to Donna Bivens, is the process where people of color develop beliefs and behaviors that collude or support the institution of racism. Internalized racism is a form of systematic oppression where people and communities of color unconsciously support white privilege and power.

Because the system of power consistently rewards those who support the racial hierarchy through a false sense of acceptance, communities of color are encouraged to perpetuate a culture that oppresses them. Because of this cycle, internalized racism can have deep psychological effects on communities of color.

For years, I struggled with these psychological battles.

And it was only through love - both the love I developed for myself and the love I received from my friends and family who supported me through this emotional journey - was I even able to begin the process of wrestling with my own internalized racism.

Too heavy? Let me break it down by sharing the lessons I learned about internalized racism.

1. Internalized Racism Was the Price I Paid for Assimilating

For me, internalized racism happened when I adopted the prevailing idea that certain racial and ethnic groups were better than others.

As an Asian-American girl growing up in a predominately white community, I thought that my white classmates were inherently better than me.

I received thousands of messages over the years that I didn't fit in. My internalized racism did not happen over night.

Until the second grade, my first language was Mandarin. I was that Chinese girl who had few friends - because nothing made sense. Everyone spoke too quickly.
Not only did I believe those messages that race can determine someone's self worth, I was applying these hurtful messages to myself. My outbursts were latent with unspoken hatred toward myself, my family, and this ever-present Asian identity that prevented me from being the person I thought I should be.
So my ultimate decision to stop speaking Mandarin was not sudden. It was a calculated move. I had worked hard to learn English. It was a decision that roosted in my heart, waiting.

My assimilation began the day I decided that rather than speaking Mandarin, the language of my parents and ancestors, I would lather my thoughts and ideas in American English instead.

Assimilation isn't just adapting to the mainstream culture. Assimilation is when you lose touch with your own culture and start overvaluing the dominant culture.

For me, assimilation meant giving up an important part of my identity, and, yet, it also meant freedom from isolation.

I was so affected by internalized racism that I became its number one spokesperson. I criticized my parents' accents because I was horrified that they would embarrass me. I didn't want to be seen as an immigrant, and I was scared that my parents - in their insistence to be their very Asian selves - would blow my cover.
I pushed away my family and culture. I became dependent on a system built on hate, a system that would rather turn me into a joke than see me as a fully actualized human worthy of respect and dignity.
So my teenage outbursts were seldom about boys or the freedom to hang out with friends past curfew.
But internalized racism doesn't erase these stereotypes. Internalized racism is like a dirty mop that only spreads the racism around.
I slammed my door and gave snappy responses because it was easier than admitting "I hate myself and everyone who loves me."

It was easier to support my oppression. Internalized racism was compulsive, like an addiction that, regardless of how much it made me hate myself, I kept going back to for more.

It made it so that I didn't have to try to love myself; I could just give in and be what this white supremacist society said was lovable.

I was haunted by this chant in first grade: " Me Chinese, me play joke. Me pee pee in your Coke." I was haunted by the woman who asked my friend: "Does she speak English?" because my silence couldn't just be a symptom of shyness.

The more I internalized those messages, the more I hated myself.

Internalized racism was the tool I used to overcome my bad memories. Rather than face the daunting task of teaching society to love me (or even, loving myself when society refused to figure out how), I could transform myself into what society seemed to already love.

I had become a tool for racism and refused to associate with other Asian people.
I was thinking like a white supremacist (in an ironic sort of way), and that needed to stop.
Further, I pushed this racial hierarchy on other people of color as well. And yes, people of color can tear each other down, too.

My "whites only" attraction neatly disguised my distaste for all men of color. At the time, I didn't see this attraction to white men as a product of racism; it was simply my preference. But I had learned this preference somewhere.

In fact, colorism - or the idea that lighter color skin is more attractive - is a remnant of colonialism, where the conquered are seen as lesser, uncivilized, and undesirable. Over time, colonialism takes you down psychologically.

That's internalized racism at work. This self-hate has been passed down over so many generations that we actually have people who say (and think) shit like "You're pretty good-looking for a dark girl" and "I can't bring home a black guy."

My desire to be more white was also my way of supporting the racial hierarchy.
Instead of searching for liberation, I became complacent with a system that punished me for what I represented. Instead of identifying my oppressor, I identified with my oppressor.
I had become my own oppressor. (Or at least some version of Bobby Jindal.)

2. It Took Me 20 Years to Recognize My Internalized Racism

I attended a pretty diverse university where, for the first time, I encountered a plethora of other people of color who felt safe, comfortable, and empowered being themselves culturally and existing in a community with each other.

Suddenly, my internalized racism felt silly. I was reminded of how much I missed myself and my culture.
Over time, I stopped rejecting my Asian-ness, because what was the point? Who was this performance for?
I started becoming friends with people who happened to be Asian. (I say that they "happened to be Asian" because I had finally decided to look past race and look for good friendship instead.) I finally dated my first non-white guy.

When I started seeing people for who they were rather than what they represented, I realized that that was all I wanted for myself while growing up.

3. I Decided to Relocate So That I Could Heal from My Internalized Racism

For me, choosing to relocate to Hawaii after college was the best decision of my life. Though it would bring me to the other side of the world, I knew that I needed to immerse myself in a culture where people looked like me. I knew my way of thinking was beyond unhealthy.
We become our own oppressor - because we hold the keys to our own shackles.
This decision scared me, but it also excited me. I had deliberately shut out a part of myself and now I was finally allowing myself to see it.

In Hawaii, I taught middle and high school math. Most of my students were of Asian backgrounds, but none of them really fit my own stereotypes. I had students who were nerds, preps, goths, jocks, band geeks, dropouts, and stoners - being Asian wasn't equivalent to a single identity.

In retrospect, I don't think I really needed to move to Hawaii. I was already in the midst of a transformation. I was embracing "new experiences" that really weren't that new. I was finally saying "yes" to who I truly was.

I was me. My Asian-ness was only one part of me. I only needed to be true to myself.

4. I Choose to Live My Truth - I Choose to Love Myself

W.E.B. Du Bois describes internalized racism as a "double consciousness" where we look at ourselves through the eyes of others. We look with pity and contempt because we can never measure up.

I had wasted so much time trying to be someone I thought I ought to be when was already so perfect as myself.
Amy Sun is a Contributing Writer for Everyday Feminism. She has worked with providing resources and support for Asian/Pacific Islander survivors of domestic violence in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia areas. She also holds her Masters in Women's Studies from the George Washington University, where she has researched the coming out processes for trans people who identify as FTM and MTF. In her past life, she was a middle and high school math teacher.
I moved to Hawaii to be a math teacher. But before I moved, I joked about that a lot. Haha, I'm Asian. Of course I teach math. This joke meant nothing in Hawaii - because most people are Asian, and Asian teachers teach all sorts of subjects.

I am back on the East Coast now, and I still teach math. I can't say that I am not aware of the stereotypes, but I can say that it bothers me less.

This is who I am! I am good at math, and I actually really enjoy it. I am alright at driving, but mostly I am just too careful. I am great in English Literature, and I actually minored in English.

I can speak Mandarin, and I am not ashamed about speaking it in public anymore. (Screw the ignorant people who think I am a foreigner. This stereotype no longer bothers me because I know there is no shame in being a foreigner. I can speak two languages. It's a talent to envy, not a skill to be suppressed.)

And I love airport sushi. I get it every time.

[do_widget id="text-101″]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
On Internalized Racism: 4 Lessons I Learned as an Undercover Asian - Everyday Feminism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Internalized racism is a form of systematic oppression - and as soon as this author could name her oppressor's tool, she could begin to overcome the oppression.

# data[].attributes.body
Interesting article I found which could be read in relation to the two documentary films we watched - History and Memory and A Family Gathering.

Citation:

Wreckage upon Wreckage: History, Documentary and the Ruins of Memory
Paula RabinowitzHistory and TheoryVol. 32, No. 2 (May, 1993), pp. 119-137Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2505348Page Count: 19

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Wreckage upon Wreckage: History, Documentary and the Ruins of Memory on JSTOR

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Paula Rabinowitz, Wreckage upon Wreckage: History, Documentary and the Ruins of Memory, History and Theory, Vol. 32, No. 2 (May, 1993), pp. 119-137

# data[].attributes.headline
Interviews with Japanese internment camp survivors

# data[].attributes.subject
Interviews with Japanese internment camp survivors

# data[].attributes.body
This is a really interesting website where you can listen to interviews with different Japanese-Americans interned during World War II

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Janet Daijogo updated
Born in San Francisco, interned at Topaz at age five, teaches kindergarten in Corte Madera, California

Rose Niedaupdated
Uprooted from her home in Washington at age nineteen, sent to Pinedale Assembly Center and then on to Tule Lake internment camp

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Janet Daijogo updated Born in San Francisco, interned at Topaz at age five, teaches kindergarten in Corte Madera, California Rose Niedaupdated Uprooted from her home in Washington at age nineteen, sent to Pinedale Assembly Center and then on to Tule Lake internment camp

# data[].attributes.headline
Bollywood movie that reminded me somewhat of Native Speaker, especially the Mitt incident

# data[].attributes.subject
Bollywood movie that reminded me somewhat of Native Speaker, especially the Mitt incident

# data[].attributes.body
This is about the post 9/11 treatment of Muslims in America. Really interesting watch.

# data[].attributes.body
The previous post linked to this one, which talks about writing and representations of minority narratives.

# data[].attributes.headline
Eddie Huang, Margaret Cho--Pop Culture, Assimilation, Model Minority Myth

# data[].attributes.subject
Eddie Huang, Margaret Cho--Pop Culture, Assimilation, Model Minority Myth

# data[].attributes.body
I came across this interview with Phinneas Kiyomura, the television series writer behind Internment, which is about the Japanese experience in internment camps. It was interesting to read

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There is a script floating around Hollywood with Japanese Americans as central characters and the desolate landscape of an American concentration camp as the setting. Much has been documented about the wrongful incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 forcing all Japanese Americans to forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast. Now, thanks to playwright, screenwriter, and actor Phinneas Kiyomura, a captivating look into the day-to-day challenges of camp life and family dynamics are dramatized in his TV pilot script, Internment -and hopefully coming to the small screen in the near future.

In Internment, the intricacies of family feuds, friendships, and romance are uncovered through the storylines of one particular Japanese American family. Through his fluid storytelling style and believable characters, albeit fictional, Kiyomura succeeds in portraying the harsh reality of life behind a barbed wire fence and guard towers. Who can resist a tantalizing drama that includes a colorful cast of characters and a touch of realism?

For Kiyomura, a Yonsei who is half Japanese and half Irish, acting and writing are nothing new. He wrote and acted in Lydia in Bed, a play lauded by critics and praised by Variety and LA Weekly. Roles on stage and in television abound as well as those behind-the-scenes as director and producer. His most recent play is Figure 8.

In this delightfully candid interview with Discover Nikkei, Kiyomura opens up about Internment, finding personal satisfaction and creative latitude in both writing and acting, and his cravings for Okinawa dango.
DN: What was the genesis of this project? How did the ideas for the script come together?
PK: Well, my father and my father's family were interned, that strange word, during the war (they went to Rohwer) and it was a piece of history that we just grew up with. So, that was an inspiration, obviously. The camps weren't a regular topic of discussion around the house, by any means, but as kids we were aware of the history. As a writer, I had meant for years to tackle the internment, but had never found a story that made sense for me to tell. And I was, and still am, scared of the topic, frankly. Scared that I'll get the tone of things wrong, scared that I'll offend or annoy the people who experienced the camps, scared that being a hapa makes me a less-than-legitimate person to tell this story and scared that these fears will weigh the material down with a lot of leaden studiousness.

But a television writer's job is to come up with material, new material, every year, often multiple times a year, and I finally just realized that I needed to break that seal on my languishing ideas-and television pilots are very ephemeral objects, which gave me a feeling of liberation in tackling the topic. Then, of course, I had to come up with an actual angle into the world and the time.

Before getting into television and film, I was a playwright and actor, so my tastes tend to run in the direction of dirty little theatre pieces-i.e., complicated relationships between often dysfunctional people. That's my bread and butter. So, the question was, how do I, doing what I do, meet this piece of history, this piece of America authentically? And I went with family. Struggle within family. Family drama with a bit of an early 1930's/40's American theatre flourish. And it just sort of popped out that the lead character was an unhappy son with a sort of brutish father, like in an O'Neill play or something, and that there would be all these fraught relationships coursing through the thing. I don't remember exactly how Ken (one of the protagonists in Internment) became a doctor, but once he did become a doctor in my mind, I realized that this gave him a position of importance within the camp that could be explored and exploited. And suddenly his relationship with his sister and his mother popped in as well. And then all my real research began. And I read a bunch of things. No-No Boy was really important to me. I swiped a bit of the mother from John Okada. And his work made me feel at ease to be tough with the characters. And I went to Manzanar and walked around. And the place was so desolate, but also strangely beautiful, which I found confusing, but inspiring. And I found footage of a surgery being performed in Santa Anita, I think it was Santa Anita, and that made surgery seem like a reality I could explore, too, so Ken became a surgeon. And then I went to one of our family's Christmas parties, and now that my relatives are getting older, they're sort of letting loose with their histories. And my wife and I got a couple of my older relatives talking and they started telling stories and pretty much immediately disputing each others' stories and all of that went into the blender and I just sort of jumped into the writing.

DN: Having read the script for the pilot episode of Internment, it is clear you are an exceptionally talented writer! The dialogue and witty exchanges between the characters are fantastic. How did you research the slang and idioms of that time period?
PK: That's very nice of you to say. Can we be friends? As far as the slang, idioms, etcetera, again we can thank John Okada. The voice in No-No Boy is a very free feeling voice, a very intimate voice, and it has a kind of infectious feeling. I don't mean that I intentionally imitated Okada, but I would peek at the book now and then. I'm also a great fan of those sort of early 20th century theatre titans: Tennessee Williams, O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and I love Hemingway, too. Kind of very obvious choices, but there you go. And all those writers infuse their own kind of poetry into their characters. I think, especially Miller uses this kind of blue-collar poetry in Death of a Salesman. And I just love charactery voices. I would watch and listen to interviews on Densho and just listen to those voices, and think about the voices of my older family members and just try to talk out loud to myself in their voices. And when I felt that I had them, I just let them talk. And later double check through Internet searches to see that what the characters say in the script could've been said at that time, or to find better versions. Dashiell Hammett and other hardboiled writers were also useful as reservoirs of slang and idiomatic expressions. And then a few I probably invented. I'm sure plenty of it is flat wrong, but can I perhaps claim poetic license? Is that allowed in a TV pilot? I'm not sure.

DN: Are any of the characters in Internment based on people you know? Perhaps anyone your father knew at Rohwer?
PK: My father was very young when he was in Rohwer, so there weren't any specific people I drew from in that way. However, my great-grandparents did return to Japan before the war and adopted a young woman who eventually came to the states as a member of our family-she's my aunt-and that story worked it's way into the family story in a sort of twisted up way. Also, it turns out that my grandfather and grandmother eloped. My grandfather was a bit of a, uh, roughneck? That's not the right word, exactly. But he wore a leather jacket, rode an Indian motorcycle, played ukulele in a band. And I love that image of him, and I wanted to have a few characters who kind of felt like that image.

DN: As a Yonsei Japanese American whose father was imprisoned at Rohwer, is it fair to say that Internment is a passion project?
PK: Yes. This is definitely a passion project. And one that I would like to see come to life. As in, get filmed, get put on TV, or the internet (hello, Netflix). If it never gets made in this form, I might rework it into a play or something else. Rock Opera? Probably not.

DN: When did you know you wanted to be a screenwriter?

PK: Well, I really, really fell in love with movies when I was a junior in high school. I mean, who doesn't love movies, but, for some reason that year I had a lot of free time and I would walk around the block to the video store and rent a movie like every day or every other day and I watched everything. I was horrible to watch movies with because I'd seen everything. My friends would complain. And, when you watch everything you start with easy stuff, or popular stuff, but then you start looking at the weird and the hard stuff, and some of it is great and some of it is terrible but it's all grist for the mill. And I started acting at just the same time, too, so acting and filmmaking came together in my mind. I started writing in college (I went to Cal State Fullerton) and we had a very small theatre library so I started writing my own scenes (which I never performed, but I wrote them anyway). And when I left college I acted and wrote in tandem for a number of years. I would substitute teach grade school in Bellflower during the day and then go do a dirty play in a dingy 99 seat theatre in Hollywood where everyone was naked and speaking in verse and then head back to teach third grade the next morning-but all that time I was writing, too. And in 2005 I had my first full length play produced at Theatre of NOTE in Hollywood. I thought it would be this little fun thing that no one would see. But the play, Lydia in Bed, got really nice reviews and we sold out our whole run. And I was like-OH, this is what I should be doing. Writing. But writing what exactly? And, almost immediately, I turned my play into a screenplay with a friend and we went through Film Independent's Screenwriting Lab and I met a bunch of great TV people and I knew that film and TV was what I should be doing. And theatre, too. I'm somewhat agnostic on form.

DN: Between acting and writing, which is your preferred creative outlet? Both?
PK: Well, I don't know. Yeah. Maybe both. Acting is literally more cathartic. I used to need to act in order to stay happy. Now, I guess I just don't bother to be happy? Really, I love them both, but I do feel that I'm a little bit more writer than actor. Both are wonderful and horrible. Like everything else in life. Except hiking. Hiking is just horrible.

DN: What is your favorite Japanese dish?
PK: That's the hardest question you've asked!!! Jeeze. I love onigiri. Gimme a warm rice ball any day. And is spicy salmon on crispy rice actually a Japanese dish? I could eat those all night long. What can I say? I'm a half Japanese kid from Long Beach. No, I know. Okinawa Dango. Mmm. Donuts.

* * * * *
Playwright, screenwriter, and actor Phinneas Kiyomura will oversee a reading of his TV pilot script, Internment at the Japanese American National Museum on February 8, 2015 at 2 p.m., with Chris Tashima directing. The reading is free with museum admission.
© 2015 Japanese American National Museum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There is a script floating around Hollywood with Japanese Americans as central characters and the desolate landscape of an American concentration camp as the setting. Much has been documented about the wrongful incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 forcing all Japanese Americans to forcibly ...

# data[].attributes.body
The presentation on Obasan made me interested in finding out more about the Japanese American activist Yuri Kochiyama. The Seattle based hip-hop duo Blue Scholars made this song in her honor (Geo has more songs about Filipino American activism as well).

# data[].attributes.body
Quoting the video blurb: "When he was a child, George Takei and his family were forced into an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, as a "security" measure during World War II. 70 years later, Takei looks back at how the camp shaped his surprising, personal definition of patriotism and democracy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why I love a country that once betrayed me | George Takei

# data[].attributes.headline
Scarlett Johansson leads "Ghost in the Shell" - Adaptation: Whitewashed Casting?

# data[].attributes.subject
Scarlett Johansson leads "Ghost in the Shell" - Adaptation: Whitewashed Casting?

# data[].attributes.body
Article I referred to in my response to the two documentaries we've seen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Read Hero Complex from the L.A. Times, covering science fiction, superheroes and fantasy.

# data[].attributes.body
Her daily routine and how she handles haters. Somewhat amusing.

# data[].attributes.body
He talks about playing Kim Jong-Un in the highly controversial "The Interview" and starring in the Asian-American ABC-Sitcom "Fresh Off the Boat"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Randall Park: From Kim Jong Un to the Brave, New Asian-American Sitcom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After playing the supreme leader in ‘The Interview,’ Randall Park takes on an equally formidable challenge: ‘Fresh Off the Boat,’ a sitcom with a predominantly Asian-American cast.

# data[].attributes.body
I quite liked this interview with Maxine Hong Kinston!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
2011 F. Scott Fitzgerald Interview with Maxine Hong Kingston

# data[].attributes.headline
"Why Don't Japanese Men Like Having Sex?"

# data[].attributes.subject
"Why Don't Japanese Men Like Having Sex?"

# data[].attributes.body
An really weird article demonstrating the sexual Othering of Asia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The alarming decrease in sexual appetite among young men in Japan is linked to the country's ongoing economic depression, writes Gareth May

Are you a herbivore or a carnivore? It might seem like a pretty standard question, but for many Japanese men it's a loaded one; a query packing a punch right to the groin.

'Herbivore', or 'grass eating men' ( soushoku danshi), in this instance, refers to a heterosexual male in no rush whatsoever to put down roots or form physical relationships. Commonly considered asexual, the herbivore is simply unconcerned with women outside of those in his family.

The term was coined by Maki Fukasawa, a Japanese columnist, back in 2006. Now, nine years later, their numbers appear to be rising alarmingly, according to a new study.

The Japan Family Planning Association interviewed 3,000 subjects about their sex lives (both men and women). The study revealed that nearly 50 per cent of those quizzed didn't have sex in the month previous to the interview. 48.3 per cent of men had not had sex for a month (an increase in 5 per cent from 2012).

Most startling of all, however, was that 20 per cent of men aged between 25 and 29 - the period of a man's life usually dedicated to the spreading of wild oats - expressed little interest in sex at all.

Young men who aren't bothered by sex? Did the world just shift on its axis?

Much has been written about the dwindling birthrates in Japan (according to this piece in the New York Times, one school system on the outskirts of Tokyo taught over 1,000 school children in 2007, a figure which had dropped to just 37 by 2012). There's no denying the situation is dire - to the extent that absurd solutions are offered without a shred of irony.

For instance, two years ago economic analyst Morinaga Takuro suggested a tax on the handsome, with the premise of opening up the playing field for otaku men (a Japanese term meaning geek) who, Takuro said, find it easier to 'fall in love with the 2D female characters from anime and manga' instead of 'human women'.

Takuro's idea was clearly an administrative nightmare - but it also missed the point. The issue in Japan isn't a 'love-gap', but an 'income gap'.

Virility and success are increasingly linked in modern Japan, where (sexually competent) businessmen are referred to as 'carnivorous' ( nikushoku danshi). Wearing a tie and bringing home the dollar is simply seen as being more sexed than staying at home and banging out the high scores on Street Fighter in sweatpants and a hoodie.

According to Angelika Koch, Researcher in Japanese Studies at Cambridge University and author of Manga Girl Seeks Herbivore Boy, the number of these carnivorous men has decreased since the economic downturn that hit Japan in the early 1990s.

"There have been media reports in Japan over the past ten years about so-called 'herbivore boys': young men who are uninterested in corporate careers, as well as relationships and sex," Koch tells me. "These shifting values amongst the younger generation may be considered a subversion of the traditional male role of the Japanese 'salaryman': the corporate male in suit and tie who dedicates his life to his company as breadwinner for his family, the sexually assertive man who spends his evenings drinking with colleagues at hostess clubs and bars."

To concentrate on issues of male identity solely, however, would be to miss the wider picture. Koch says that young men are not the only ones who "increasingly shy away from relationships and the traditional gender roles associated with them".

The continuous drop in marriage rates (in 2005, roughly 18 percent of Japanese females aged 35-39 had never been married) and sexless marriages after the birth of the first child are gender-shared issues.

As Koch says, "a man may see his wife mainly as mother, rather than as sex partner" after the birth of their first child. By the same token Japanese sociologists have found that a very high percentage of these "sexless spouses say they do not mind this situation, as they get along perfectly well with their partner otherwise".

Dr Mark Pendleton, Lecturer in Japanese Studies at The University of Sheffield, argues this issue further, telling me that 'panics' about sexuality and gender are 'not new'.

He also says that "sexlessness is not specific to Japan," citing the most recent British NATSAL survey, which reported a decline in sexual activity since 2000. (About 15pc of men and about 35pc of women weren't interested in sex at all and about 40pc had not had sex in the last four weeks. You know who you are.)

Indeed, for a country such as Japan that can lay claim to the invention of one of the earliest sex toys (the brilliantly named Ben Wa Balls, around 500 A.D.) and produced one of the first films to feature 'unsimulated' sex, In The Realm of the Sense, the claim of a bonking crisis might seem a bit rich, especially coming from the prudish and pervy English. Carry On, anyone?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The alarming decrease in sexual appetite among young men in Japan is linked to the country's ongoing economic depression, writes Gareth May

# data[].attributes.body
This song struck me as relevant, as we are reading about conflict between different minority groups, and gendered narratives :)

# data[].attributes.headline
Pumpkin Fest Riots and Ferguson Portrayal

# data[].attributes.subject
Pumpkin Fest Riots and Ferguson Portrayal

# data[].attributes.body
Interesting article on the differences in reportage and language used to describe the two events.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why Pumpkin Fest riots are not like Ferguson | CNN

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Keene's Pumpkin Fest violence isn't like Ferguson, experts say, but it still raised important points about racist double standards.

# data[].attributes.body
Really interesting TED talk by Chinese artist/photographer who camouflages himself to become "invisible" in different landscapes to make statements about various issues in our society. Not directly related to what we're talking about in class, but I thought the idea of being seen but invisible was comparable to the immigrant stories we're reading.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content.

By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our Privacy Policy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Can a person disappear in plain sight? That's the question Liu Bolin's remarkable work seems to ask. The Beijing-based artist is sometimes called "The Invisible Man" because in nearly all his art, Bolin is front and center - and completely unseen. He aims to draw attention to social and political issues by dissolving into the background.

# data[].attributes.headline
Images and stories from Osajima's Model Minority article - 7

# data[].attributes.subject
Images and stories from Osajima's Model Minority article - 7

# data[].attributes.headline
Images and stories from Osajima's Model Minority article - 6

# data[].attributes.subject
Images and stories from Osajima's Model Minority article - 6

# data[].attributes.headline
Images and stories from Osajima's Model Minority article - 5

# data[].attributes.subject
Images and stories from Osajima's Model Minority article - 5

# data[].attributes.headline
Images and stories from Osajima's Model Minority article - 4

# data[].attributes.subject
Images and stories from Osajima's Model Minority article - 4

# data[].attributes.headline
Images and stories from Osajima's Model Minority article - 3

# data[].attributes.subject
Images and stories from Osajima's Model Minority article - 3

# data[].attributes.headline
Images and stories from Osajima's Model Minority article - 2

# data[].attributes.subject
Images and stories from Osajima's Model Minority article - 2

# data[].attributes.headline
Images and stories from Osajima's Model Minority article - 1

# data[].attributes.subject
Images and stories from Osajima's Model Minority article - 1

# data[].attributes.body
An interesting article on the model minority myth

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"You're Asian, of course you're good at math!"

This is the statement that Hannah Zhang, a sophomore at Columbia University, says she heard constantly growing up.

"I'm Chinese American, studying economics at an Ivy League school, good at piano, class valedictorian from high school. I guess you could say I fit the model minority myth," she says.

"My aspirations are not culturally programmed. I have struggled with anxiety, fought with my parents about my future and faced microaggressions growing up in rural America," Zhang says.

Katie Zdunek, a journalism major at Western Kentucky University, agrees.

"These stereotypes negate individual needs, talents, and experiences. It's demeaning!" Zdunek says.

According to the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (WHIAAPI), a lack of disaggregated data about this fast growing racial demographic has given rise to the model minority myth - the notion that the majority of AAPIs have already accomplished the "American dream."
RELATED: New Hampshire students take to Twitter to air minority struggles
Overarching social perceptions portray AAPIs as self-sufficient, highly educated and upwardly mobile. Yet, in actuality, several subgroups within the AAPI community continue to face unmet needs and barriers to academic and professional success.

One in three AAPIs has limited English proficiency, while 50% of all AAPI students in higher education attend community colleges. Due to a persisting taboo around seeking help for mental illnesses, AAPIs also have a low utilization rate for mental health services among all minorities.

To create greater awareness about the diversity of the AAPI population and draw attention to the needs of underserved AAPI subgroups, WHIAAPI has launched an online data portal that consolidates all government information on AAPIs into one Web location. The portal is easily accessible by anyone and searchable by theme, language, race, and ethnic group.

"(This) marks an important milestone for better understanding and responding to the complex needs of AAPIs," says Kiran Ahuja, executive director at WHIAAPI.

Many AAPI students have enthusiastically welcomed this new wealth of data about their community. "This data portal proves that AAPIs are large, diverse and composed of multiple stories, experiences, and values," says Belinda Lei, an international politics major in her second year at Georgetown University.

Unfortunately, the model minority myth remains deeply ingrained in every sphere of contemporary society - so much so that members of the community itself believe it to be true, says Sunny Huang, an AAPI student and sociology major at Lehigh University.

"The model minority myth prevented my mother from recognizing that she had a mental illness. It made my brother and I believe that we had to excel at everything we did, when that is an impossible expectation for anyone to meet," says Huang.

Jennifer Tran, a senior at University of Texas at Austin, agrees. "I was frustrated with the way I had to constantly prove to other people that I was far more than the stereotype," she says.

Katie Roberts, a photojournalism major at Western Kentucky University, agrees. "I was adopted by a white American woman when I was three months old. I am more than my skin color; I am a daughter, a sister, a student, a photographer, an American."

This alienation may be deepened by AAPI students' failure to connect with other students of color, says Eng Gin Moe, a junior at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

"White students view me as part of the minority, but different communities of color may not include AAPIs like me in conversations about diversity and disenfranchised populations," says Moe.
RELATED: Paying for college: 4 great scholarships for minority students
As policymakers continue to bank on the model minority myth, government and institutional policies are falling short of bridging gaps in access for AAPI subgroups, says Jenny Lu, a senior studying media studies and political science at University of California, Berkeley.

"Academic scholarships geared towards 'minorities' often fail to recognize AAPIs. Low-income AAPI families remain invisible, as do subpopulations such as Southeast Asian refugees from war-torn countries," Lu says.

This can be particularly damaging for the Pacific Islander community, where unmet educational needs are particularly high. Statistics show that only 1 in 7 Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders has a college degree. In addition, Pacific Islanders have among the highest unemployment rates of all racial or ethnic groups.

"We are commonly disregarded in this huge 'AAPI' category. People only see Asian American - they don't even know what 'PI' means," exclaims Veronica Zamani, a junior studying politics, public policy and education at the University of California, Los Angeles.

With the launch of the AAPI portal, AAPI students feel the time is ripe for the model minority myth to be abandoned once and for all in favor of representative statistics on their community.

"The statistics highlighted by (the AAPI portal) prove that the model minority myth is inaccurate and harmful. We cannot continue to hide underrepresented AAPIs under skewed statistics," says Lei.

Areeba Kamal is a junior at Mount Holyoke College. This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Students reject the 'Model Minority Myth'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"You're Asian, of course you're good at math!" This is the statement that Hannah Zhang, a sophomore at Columbia University, says she heard constantly growing up. "I'm Chinese American, studying economics at an Ivy League school, good at piano,...

# data[].attributes.headline
Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie TED talk - The Danger of a Single Story

# data[].attributes.subject
Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie TED talk - The Danger of a Single Story

# data[].attributes.body
Hollywood's representation of Asian-American men and women perpetuate a single narrative and this talk was really powerful in explaining why this is so dangerous!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story | TED

# data[].attributes.headline
ChangeLab: The Importance of Asian/Americans

# data[].attributes.subject
ChangeLab: The Importance of Asian/Americans

# data[].attributes.body
A guidebook for those of you interested in AsAm activist movements.

# data[].attributes.body
Padlet can be a good place for posting your favorite quotations. Here's a zinger from the Lisa Lowe reading that explains so much of why "diversity" initiatives often feel so superficial:

"the 'multicultural' aestheticization and commodification of racialized ethnic cultures ... can take place only through 'forgetting' the material histories of racialization, segregation, and economic violence" (30).

# data[].attributes.body
A blog I found online that talks about an issue similar to what Lisa Lowe's introduction grapples with - several South Asians and Arabs are considered to be American citizens on one hand and yet, post 9/11 are sketched as the 'other' to be feared, an 'other' whose very existence is threatening.

# data[].attributes.headline
Frank Wu, "Why Vincent Chin Matters" (2012)

# data[].attributes.subject
Frank Wu, "Why Vincent Chin Matters" (2012)

# data[].attributes.body
1st reading assignment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opinion | Why Vincent Chin Matters (Published 2012)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Despite decades of debunking, the model minority myth — the perception of Asian-Americans as overachieving nerds — persists.

# data[].attributes.headline
Frank Wu, "Why Vincent Chin Matters" (2012)

# data[].attributes.subject
Frank Wu, "Why Vincent Chin Matters" (2012)

# data[].attributes.body
a good (albeit familiar) take on the "Where are you from?" exotification of Asian women issue.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Would the Yellow Ranger Do?: On the Exotification of Asian Women - Everyday Feminism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Asking someone where they are from or calling them exotic is not a compliment or a sign of your curiosity. Even though it's so normalized, it's actually a racialized microaggression that so many people have to experience several times a day, every day.

# data[].attributes.body
sets up in less than 5 min. the occasion for our first week of readings.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Vincent Who? - Official Full-Length Trailer (widescreen)

# data[].attributes.headline
from Victor Bascara's Model Minority Imperialism

# data[].attributes.subject
from Victor Bascara's Model Minority Imperialism

# data[].attributes.body
“The transition from menace to model minority conveniently rendered state power not only legitimate but benevolent” (xxii).

# data[].attributes.headline
New York City, 1975. Mass demonstrations against the brutal police beating of Peter Yew in Chinatown.

# data[].attributes.subject
New York City, 1975. Mass demonstrations against the brutal police beating of Peter Yew in Chinatown.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Solidarity: a socialist, feminist, anti-racist organization

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Solidarity: a socialist, feminist, anti-racist organization - New York City, 1975. Mass demonstrations against the brutal police beating of Peter Yew in Chinatown. | Facebook

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
New York City, 1975. Mass demonstrations against the brutal police beating of Peter Yew in Chinatown.

# data[].attributes.body
"The Rise of Asian Americans"