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

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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.