Shift in Gender Bias in Korea

This article from Dec. 23 on gender balance in Korea is fascinating. It shows how a change in a country's economy and political system can affect deep-seated prejudices (in this case, Korea's economic boom and shift to democracy helped decrease sexism).

Where Boys Were Kings, a Shift Toward Baby Girls
By CHOE SANG-HUN

In South Korea, once one of Asia’s most rigidly patriarchal societies, a centuries-old preference for baby boys is fast receding. And that has led to what seems to be a decrease in the number of abortions performed after ultrasounds that reveal the sex of a fetus....

When I read this story, I wondered: when will this happen in China?

It is heartening that China and India are now looking at South Korea as a "trendsetter in Asia," and whether these similar socio-economic changes can happen in their own countries.

It's also ironic that Confucian values, which are looked upon as a positive aspect of Asian culture (leading to respect, politeness, caring for your parents in their old age) could also cause such a negative, widespread phenomenon of sexism:

The study suggests that the country’s former authoritarian rulers helped slow the transition by upholding laws and devising policies that supported a continuation of Confucian hierarchy, which encourages fealty not only to family patriarchs, but also to the nation’s leaders.

With the move toward democracy in the late 1980s, the concept of equal rights for men and women began to creep into Koreans’ thinking. In 1990, the law guaranteeing men their family’s inheritance — a cornerstone of the Confucian system — was the first of the so-called family laws to fall; the rest would be dismantled over the next 15 years.

Perhaps sometimes I think America is too liberal, creating frivolous lawsuits and too many borderline cases in favor of free speech, but there is something to be said for democracy helping to bring about equal rights.

I'm really glad this change is happening in Korea, and that even the government started campaigns promoting the value of daughters. It will be interesting to watch how China changes as it increasingly industrializes and grows.

Scary Stats for Asian American Females

Just some statistics I think every Asian American (and those who are about them) should know:


Asian American adolescent girls have the highest rates of depressive symptoms of all racial/ethnic groups.

Asian American women ages 15-24 have the highest suicide rate of women in any race or ethnic group in that age bracket.

AAPI women over the age of 65 have the highest suicide mortality rate among all racial/ethnic groups. --U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

"As a group, Asian Americans have lower rates of mental illness than whites but seek treatment less often."--American Psychological Association Monitor

"One study found that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are significantly less likely than Caucasians to mention their mental health concerns to:
- a friend or relative (12% vs. 25%)
- a mental health professional (4% vs. 26%)
- or a physician (2% vs. 13%). --citing the Journal of Community Psychology in the Suicide Prevention Resource Center fact sheet.

Repression & Self-Sacrifice: the Asian American Female Problem

This is a topic that is really important to me, and personally relevant.

We talked a lot about repression in the second of the mental health talks by the AAWA , which featured two female psychologist guest speakers, one from Harvard's Bureau of Study Counsel, and the other from Cambridge Health Alliance. It was a pretty nice turnout of about 15 students (all female, except one male).

Dr. Sunglim Shin opened by saying something that would be a theme: Asian American women often forget to take care of themselves, because they are so busy taking care of others.

I'm sure this is not only an Asian American thing but perhaps a female thing, but I think it's double whammy for Asian American females.

Partly, it's because Asian cultures tend to not talk about their feelings, and express things in a round-about way, rather than directly.

We talked about the silent treatment that Asians tend to do, and many girls in the room murmured in agreement.

When Americans punish their kids, they put them in the room (time out), but the Asian kids they put them outside and shut the door, Dr. Idee Kumiko said. The idea is "you're not our kids, you're not our family members anymore"

Dr. Shin mentioned that there's a curse in korean that denotes you as a "non-person" or you're on the outside, which is the ultimate form of insult, rendering them a non-meaningful person. That's why in a collective culture like Asian culture, it's so important to belong, to not make waves.

One student mentioned that when she was a kid, her father would punish her by completely cutting off communication with her, and that to this day, if she's ignored by someone she cares about or is beginning to care about, it gives her anxiety when the person doesn't talk to her. She starts to feel that she did something wrong. She realizes now that it's not applicable outside her family, but stems from that childhood fear, where there was no evaluation of what you did wrong, just a complete stop, complete silence.

I can relate. I used to do that, and sometimes still slip back into it, but I try to avoid that passive-aggressive treatment now. I can also relate to the father's strictness, although in a different way. My dad didn't do the silent treatment as much as angry outbursts, but the silence before the storm was always the worst. I also remember that there was never "sorry" from my dad growing up, but he would apologize through his actions then instead: a hug, cooking me my favorite meal. I love my dad, and I know he loves me, but I have to say that this form of communication was probably not the best.

Basically, in an Asian household there's no talking back, and the father is always right, which promotes repression. I learned to hold things inside of me, to censor myself, to express myself fully only through writing. I learned to avoid eye contact and to hide my feelings, to compose my face as much as I could, to protect myself through feigned stoicism. It's something I'm still trying to undo.

I'm sure many of you (who are Asian American females) can relate to this?

Dr. Kumiko also touched on this aspect in romantic relationships. She said in her clinical experience, she noticed that many Asian women tend to hold things in, unconsciously expecting their partner to know what's on their mind, and then they burst because they can't take it anymore that the other person has no idea why/how upset they are. So they blow up.

"That's my mom every other day," said the only guy at the talk. Everyone laughed.

But it's somewhat true, and scary.

Dr. Kumiko also mentioned an interesting case study, where an Asian woman started going to counseling because of her relationship problems with her Caucasian boyfriend, mentioning the whole repression thing. But the underlying problem was that her parents gave her immense pressure as a child to excel in school, always criticizing, and never praising, so that she never felt good enough. Actually, she was very bright and went to university at the age of 14, but every little mistake seemed like a giant, insurmountable failure to her, bringing tons of guilt.

One incident involved her presentation in front of faculty not going well, which caused her to feel that she not only failed herself, but worse, failed her professor (whom she admired deeply) and made him lose face. This sent her into a severe depression and suicidal thoughts. At that point, her parents were extremely worried and told her that she didn't have to work so hard, that maybe she could major in something easier, but it only made her feel worse, because she felt that they had give up on her. At any rate, there is a happy ending to this case. The woman went to three years of individual therapy and gradually realized that her self-worth was independent from others' opinions, that failures weren't the end of the world. She also realized that her boyfriend never understood her, even as she tried to understand him and adjust to his beliefs, so she broke up with him. Dr. Kumiko said that she was doing quite well now.

A few other students shared their own experiences and battles with identity and depression, which was very powerful. For Asian Americans, who don't feel comfortable talking about their feelings, and for whom mental illness carries an even larger stigma than for white Americans, I found this event to be a good step in changing things.

Microaggressions & the New Asian Peril

My last post reminded me of a recent Boston Globe article that my journalism teacher suggested I look at. It's about a nation-wide resurgence of subtle racism across college campuses, which an assistant professor at Simmons College termed "microaggressions":

Campuses mobilize events around clearly offensive incidents. But Asian, Latino, and black students often suffer from "microagressions" says Graves: "subtle, almost unintentional indignities students of color have to face every day that are hard for them to deal with."

One example Graves gives is of professors who call on African-American students whenever the classroom subject turns to black culture, something several black students at BC complained about. "You become the representative of all blackness," Graves says, "which is an unfair position to be in."

Microaggressions are also difficult to report....

Many white don't recognize that these challenges remain, says Graves, because they believe the civil-rights movement ended tensions. "A lot of things are looked at as jokes or pranks," says Ashley Edwards, 20, a black BC sophomore....

Grace Choi, a BC senior, says she and her friends don't go out on nights where there will be plenty of public drinking on campus to avoid the possibility getting called a racial slur. The college atmosphere makes her uneasy

.

The article also mentions that nooses have been found at the University of Maryland, Cal State Fullerton, Purdue, and Columbia, and that there are campus "Crossing the Border" or "Ghetto" parties on listed on Facebook that show white students wearing blackface...

That's scary. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to have grown up in a tolerant, diverse community in the San Francisco bay area, and how lucky I am to be in a similar environment in Cambridge. (In fact, there's a joke that UCLA stands for "University of Caucasians Living Among Asians" and that MIT stands for "Made in Taiwan".) Actually, though, some local Bostonians here have told me that the area isn't as liberal and open as others would think it is. Does anyone agree?

I also just remembered another interesting point Professor Tang made in that talk I attended: I asked him if the subtle forms of racism Asian Americans face today can be compared to the institutional racism that blacks faced after slavery was abolished, when things were ostensibly better, but in fact, discrimination just went underground.

Tang replied that it was similar, that although the "Yellow Peril" should've fallen away, there was a new "Asian Peril", the fear that Asians were taking the jobs and "out-whiting the whites". So, a new form of racism sets in at the moment Asian Americans are supposed to claim progress, he said.

That actually reminds me of the first (and only) overt brush with racism I've had. I was in junior high, biking back with my brother and his friend in the backstreets, when we saw three boys standing in the middle of the street. They didn't budge when we approached. Instead, they ran right in our path, forcing us to swerve and hit the sidewalk. Then they swore and yelled at us: “Chinks! Go back to your own country!”

Luckily, a neighbor came out and scolded them, letting us speed away.

Later, I asked my brother what "chink" meant, and he told me that it was a slang word for a Chinese person. I was shocked at the time, because I had never experienced rascism and prejudice before. It hurt me—and it made me realize that I was different. I asked my dad about it, and he said that it was perhaps because people blamed the Chinese for taking jobs from Americans.

For a while I became paranoid. Once, I bumped into a Caucasian man in a restaurant. And for some reason, I felt ashamed. Did he think I was a blundering foolish Chinese person?

I eventually got over it, and I don't really think about it too much in my daily life. But seeing the situation now and a few years back, with the Patriot Act and the current immigration debate, it remind me that people will always start despising what they do not understand and fear.

Prof. Tang, in fact, said that Asian Americans should especially pay attention to the current immigration policies, because we share the same history of inequality, exclusion, and eventual resistance. He has a good point...I myself haven't followed this issue in the news extensively, but I'm starting to think I should.

Mental Health & the 1.5 Generation + Beyond

I attended a series of mental health talks sponsored by the Asian American Women's Association a few weeks ago, and really feel compelled to share what I've heard there. I actually decided to do my journalism final project on this topic as well.

The first talk featured visiting Asian American history professor, Eric Tang. He talked about the findings from the National Latino and Asian American Study, the largest and most recent national study on these minorities and their mental health statistics.

One of the most interesting points in his talk was the "lack of reciprocity" that he said Asian Americans have experienced. Tang said that Asian American mental health is very much a part of American history, that the exclusion acts in the late to mid-19th century created this "lack of reciprocity" or "break from reality" for Asian Americans. In other words, the identity they see of themselves, as capable citizens who can do as much as any other white American, is not reciprocated back to them in society.

Tang said: "Imagine a world where you wake up every morning and have a sense of yourself but none of who you believe yourself to be is reciprocated in the world, none of that is reflected back. Eventually, according to modern psychology, there's a breakdown, where you are no longer able to even see yourself, to distinguish yourself from the rest of the world, and that...is in effect, mental illness...

"And if you think about the history of Asian Americans in this country...so much of who Asian Americans are and how they've been defined in this country has been based on an exclusion and very little of it has been based on a reciprocal understanding of who we are as it's reflected back in broader society."

Another interesting parts of his talk was on the findings in the National Latino and Asian Study, the largest study of its kind to study these minorities and their mental health needs and situations. The NLAAS found that the 1.5 generation (generation that immigrated to the U.S. as very young children) and beyond (second generation, for example) are more likely than their immigrant parents to have emotional disorders. The reason being, that the parents already formed their identity and had it reciprocated for most of their lives in their homeland. When they come to a new country like the U.S., they expect to be treated differently.

That makes sense to me. Most immigrants come to the U.S. with a specific goal, and though they face discrimination, they also get some slack for being foreigners, and they have a strong sense of self that reassure them in their new surroundings.

But for the 1.5 generation and beyond, they were born here or came when they were very young; they are expected to succeed and fit in, and yet are not treated like they belong. The racism is more subtle for the 1.5 generation and beyond, and thus more difficult to deal with.

When I heard this, I was like, finally! I can tell my parents that it isn't just that us kids (the second generation) aren't simply lazy or indecisive—although we have more opportunities than our parents, we're also facing more difficult, insidious discrimination.

I think for me, it may not have been as much of an issue, because I grew up in an pretty Asian-dominated area. But I can imagine how it is like for those who truly are a minority in their community. And we can still see this in the glass ceilings that usually exist for Asian Americans in the workforce. We also have to fight the model minority myth. According to articles I've read, many Asian American students who don't fit the myth (are not straight A students) often get neglected in the school system, or feel extreme pressure to conform and feel depressed when they cannot.

So, it makes sense that our generation has a higher risk for mental health issues. We're expected by our parents to make them proud of their investment in us by excelling in school and career, and we're also expected to excel in society, yet at the same time, we often can't reach our goals b/c we are still the minority with the lowest population in the U.S. (although we're also the fastest growing) and still meet with subtle, if not outright, discrimination.

Lucky 8 & 2008 Olympics

This is neat: I just found out that the Beijing Olympics will be held on 8/8,
(my birthday) and the opening ceremony will start at 8 pm! I wonder if it'll start at 8:08...

Those Chinese people and their obsession with the number 8...

I heard that actually it started with the Cantonese, because in that dialect, the number "8" sounds like the word for "rich", so it became a lucky number. Then it spread to the Mandarin-speaking areas.

Now you get Chinese companies like "888 Auto" (where my dad gets his car fixed)
and people bidding for phone numbers with as many 8s in them as possible.

So, if my birthday had been 1988 instead of 1981, imagine how lucky/rich I would be! :)