January 8, 2007
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…please check the box?!?!?…
My friend Yvonne sent me the following article on Asians and Asian Americans in higher education and their prevalence and soaring rates of enrollment in the elite universities in the country. The article also touches on the heightening racial tensions that have been sparked by this growing “trend”…
I’m not quite sure what this “trend” is though. Is it really a trend or is it just America and its bumbling institutions not acknowledging the fact that they can’t aggregate everyone into a simple racial box again? Clearly, I’m a proponent of the latter. Here’s the common mistake…
Within the Asian race, there’s a multitude of differing ethnicities, more than most care to name or count. Why, then, are these groups all categorized together when they have distinct linguistic, cultural, and religious traits that clearly separate them from one another?! The simple fact that I may share the same amount of melanin as my Korean or Japanese counterparts does not mean that one can negate the fact that my roots extend to separate and sovereign countries, and should thus be treated separately. It’s not an Asian or Black or Latino issue ladies and gentlemen, the various ethnicities within the Asian race are merely progressing towards true representations of their own respective communities. Aggregated data presents a very skewed perspective of the true nature of university demographics without providing the full socio-economic profile of each ethnic group. The fact of the matter is that in as much difference that exists between Blacks and Asians socio-economically, you can also find that difference between East and Southeast Asian. It’s time to stop looking at issues in a purely racialized fashion
where we pit one race against another to see who will win the
oppression olympics. We are at a pivotal point in our society now where communities of color have achieved a fair amount of progress and parity such that we must now move beyond race and address the specific issues pertinent to each ethnicity; only then can we begin to make real progress…In other news, Fortune has just rated Google as the No. 1 best company to work for above Genentech and Wegmans Food Markets. Yay!
Comments (17)
Interesting… and well said!
I agree that there current system used to characterize race obscures the complexity within the Asian American community. In many ways it does stand in the way of long term and effective progress. Rome wasn’t built in a day and the need to change such things can come only come from the people themselves. That is the beauty of living in America. I agree that now is the time to call for a re-evaluation of things that does not discount the past and why the need for such categories exist, but one that examines how much we have progresed as a nation of cultures showing bad the current system is.
I am with u
BJ
And to think in HS when we took a survey and Asian wasn’t an option, my teachers advice was to select Latino… Karma got him back for that.
ryc: whatever ty! i dont need to update my xanga for you. haha you get all the updates when we chat! hahaha cant wait just a few more days!
yay! have you got the offer for FTE yet?
yeah, i read that article and i agree with your thoughts on it. there was definitely a time when i wouldn’t think twice about it (my ohio days), but i definitely get the idea that there’s definitely a lot more to the issue of “soaring asian enrollment” than folks realize.
thanks for the comment, ty! we’ll see how many resolutions actually happen. take care and may you have a great 2007.
he WAS in solitary confinement. now he’s in a unit with the big boys. puahaha. bleh. =)
Thanks for the tip! It definitely looks like a feel-good movie
And although I’m loving the google thing, I feel bad for Wegmans! I don’t know if there are any Wegmans stores on the west coast, but they’re amazing
you came to aquariussf? did we meet? lol
Yay, and we’re in there too, did you notice? (Intuit). I’m glad you love the place. You still haven’t told me what you’re doing there. Now I’m sure you’re building a robot army.
I agree with you totally on further specifying ethnicity. There is just as much difference among Caucasian nationalities as well, with the exception of the so-called ”American,” which we made up in our heads. Perhaps the reason most forms don’t allow it is due to space. We could simply adopt a code, and that would free up even more space. Japanese would be JP, your code would be KH, and mine would be BV (Bavarian). What do you think?
I hate you. Intel is not even on the list…
amen! …it’s a huge issue with data collection in the public health field. there’s often no or low captured data/info due to ignoring ethnicities. even past the specific asian or pacific islander ethnicities, sometimes A&PIs are just clumped under “other.” how are A&PIs supposed to get recognition (which tends to lead to funding) without any representation in the numbers/data?
i like how you did the i love google. i love how they change their logo once in a while for a day for like new year’s day, world aids day and stuff.
i love google too!
First thought: why would a university’s population be expected to mirror (or closely reflect) a state’s overall population, when most students are of a very narrow age range. At the very least, wouldn’t it make more sense that the university population looks more like the population of college-aged people in the state?
Kind of an interesting dilema, isn’t it? Equality cannot fully be realised if people are treated differently based upon various demographic categories; Inequalities cannot fully be redressed if consideration isn’t given to the categories that, the membership or perceived membership in which has denied someone equality in the past. And then where we can all mostly agree upon the need for categorisation – scientific/medical studies being one good example, the categories are overly broad and ultimately less meaningful.
One quote that really struck me was the following:
“Quite frankly, when you walk around campus, it’s overwhelmingly Asian,” [Armilla Stanley, an African-American second-year law student] says. “I don’t feel any tension between Asians and blacks, but I don’t really identify with the Asian community as a minority either.”
We’re entering a new era, especially in California, where the identity of “minority” doesn’t necessarily mean what it used to.
At the end of the day, I cast my vote with Eric Liu: “Until all students — from rural outposts to impoverished urban settings — are given equal access to the Advanced Placement classes that have proved to be a ticket to the best colleges, then the idea of pure meritocracy is bunk.” The problem isn’t the enrollment in Berkeley in particular or universities in general; it is what we’re doing to make sure that all young people have the right educational opportunities from the start.
u work at google? i applied but got rejected
You bring up a good point.