Notes of a native tiger son: it's a weird time to be Asian-American
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
"The Immigration Act of 1965... created preference categories for science, math and engineering-trained immigrants to come over. [Asian countries] were producing a surplus of college-educated adults but lacked a sufficiently developed domestic economy to adequately absorb them. The 1965 Immigration Act, in trying to bolster America's own domestic needs, inadvertently helped absorb that surplus [and] influenced the American perception that Asians were somehow naturally gifted in math and science because there was a disproportionate number of immigrants coming from Asia with those skills."
Later extended to cover all Asian immigrants.
There was certainly demand to emigrate to the US, but it was forbidden. This act alone I think goes a long, long way to explaining why Asian Americans are a fairly recent phenomenon and "weird" to American culture.
Just to let you know, you're not alone there as a country.
As I said, nebulous; I hadn't really pursued the line of thought very far, just tangentially as it came up elsewhere. I hadn't known about the 1965 Act, and its existence and the above analysis just instantly explained so much so well and without reference to Asians somehow being magically different; just that the math/sci trait had been selected for within the Asian-American population.
Not that it rules out other explanations. But it's so blindingly obvious (in retrospect :) that the Act would have some effect along these lines, that Occam's Razor raises the bar for other explanations by a lot.
I know about the immigration act's effect on the Asian American population because I was an Asian/Asian American Studies major. That your comment received so many upvotes explains some of why these beliefs are so pervasive.
Moreover, our curricula are incredibly tone deaf if this major shift in the American population isn't required knowledge for passing American history.
As a kid in the 90s, I remember talking to an older friend about future career advice. I mentioned acting or dancing as possible paths for Asian Americans. He scoffed, telling me that the only place for Asians in American pop culture was in martial art films. Out of all the memories, that particular conversation stuck with me for years.
My father's immigration to the states was squarely in line with the Immigration Act of 1965. He was at the top of his class (and really, the country) in Taiwan, and came to study for his PhD at Yale. I grew up in a household not too far off from Chua's advice. There are pros and cons to this way of parenting (I won't go into all of those). What I know for sure is that emulating it to a T is bad.
The most dangerous aspect of the Chua-way of parenting isn't the borderline academic abuse: it's the blindness to opportunities. Sharply focusing on math and science, and then aiming to get into an "old" profession like being a doctor or lawyer, prevents the child from ever exploring or even considering other possibilities.
Growing up, I really didn't consider other career opportunities besides getting a PhD like my dad and pursuing an electrical engineering career. I have since deviated from that path, but it took me a long time and a halfway pursued PhD. Now I'm happily doing web development and design for my job, a longtime hobby of mine ever since childhood.
I have always wondered what would have happened if my parents had let me explore outside of the usual math and science career paths. Maybe I would have jumped into web development earlier and more seriously. Or, maybe I would have been a dancer or chef. The possibilities I could have explored in college, but didn't because of guilt, still keeps me up at night.
In the end, I did finally find my passion and am pursuing it full time. But, I know a lot of my Asian peers who are now stuck in a career choice that was thrust upon them by their parents. And now they can't, or don't have enough motivation to get out.
I have no idea what tactic I will use to parent my own children someday. But I know for sure that I will let my child explore career choices outside of my own, and to let them mold their own career path.
That's exactly the point. They fear that their children will pursue one of those other possibilities the way you or I would fear our children becoming drug addicts. I don't think it's restricted to East Asians; it seems consistent among recent immigrants. I mentioned to a friend from Iran that I had high LSAT scores and could have gone to law school -- I didn't even say a good law school -- and she was astonished. To her, the higher income and prestige of being a lawyer was decisive; it was bizarre that I chose a lower-paid path that resulted in me existing beneath lawyers in the social pecking order. How could I choose to make less money, live in a smaller house in a less posh neighborhood, drive a cheaper car, and go on less lavish vacations?
High-paid professions with stable demand and high, meritocratic barriers to entry are ideal vehicles for recent immigrants, whether they want to ensure their class (if they come from an upper class in a society where falling out of the upper class is catastrophic) or their financial security (if they come from a country where economic existence is precarious and subject to great disruptions.)
Upper-middle-class Americans are a little weird in that we are just as obsessed with class as anyone else, yet we often subordinate class to lifestyle factors when choosing a career. In fact, unlike upper-class, lower-class, or most other middle-class Americans, we are stuck in a kind of catch-22 where it is considered gauche to show concern for maintaining or improving our class status. We also sacrifice security, but I don't think it is conscious: we just can't viscerally comprehend economic insecurity. To my friend, I shrugged and said, "I wouldn't have enjoyed being a lawyer. I might as well choose a career I enjoy. After all, no one is starving." I never had any artistic or musical interests, so my blasé attitude toward class was never tested by the prospect of a sub-middle-class career, but I never questioned it when it came to opportunities to move up. Doctor, lawyer, meh, doesn't sound fun. That attitude horrifies many immigrant parents.
Almost everything against the Asian parents are against how their values are different from typical "American" parents: strict vs. lenient, off-putting vs. dotting. "I have to sit at home doing SAT practice sets and violin lessons while other kids are going to Chemical Romance concerts." A lot of anger comes from if my parents didn't prevent me from doing X (electric guitar) or forced me to do Y (volin), I could have been Z (football quarterback/rockstar/kissing the prom queen). These reasons may be true, but it's irresponsible to put all your shortcomings on your parents and it's dangerous because I know people who are in their late 20's, 30's long after they have moved out their parents house still playing the blame game.
On the other hand, American culture is so different than Asian culture and no matter how Americanized you get, you still have some Asian influences. For instance, when I'm out with my Asian friends, we interact like we are kindergarten teachers, always very attentive to others' egos and emotions whereas with my American friends, we interact like we are in prison, joking and bustin' each other balls and never showing vulnerabilities. Sometimes I get frustrated at the "games" you have to play chasing American chicks or "bromance," where you have to put a "confidence" facade instead of expressing yourself as is.
But I have come to accept Asian parents for what they are. I'm grateful for what mine has taught me and not grateful for their old ingrained concepts that runs counterproductive to living in a Western society. But one thing is constant always however, you can't teach old dogs new tricks. I could bang my head against the wall to try to explain to my parents American values and they won't understand (because maybe I myself and really anyone else don't even comprehend what American values are). But it's more practical and beneficial for me to accept responsibility for my own issues and work on them myself.
> "For instance, when I'm out with my Asian friends, we interact like we are kindergarten teachers, always very attentive to others' egos and emotions"
Whereabouts did/do you live? My Asian friends around here act no differently than any other human being I regularly interact with. I really don't get the "heightened emotional sensitivity" part. Similarly, nearly all of my western friends aren't the bromancing invulnerable types. Methinks this is less about race and more about hanging around with the wrong crowd.
As a further anecdote, as a westernized Asian, "sticking with your own kind" is not always advisable. Sadly, to this day when I meet a particularly Asian Asian, my initial reaction is one of wary distrust. I have yet to face anywhere near the same type of racial/cultural hatred from any white, brown, or black person as I have from my fellow yellows, for being "too white".
FWIW, I don't hate my parents - quite the opposite in fact. Then again, they weren't the stereotypical hyper-traditional Asian parent, so that might be something. What I do find sad yet hilarious is the number of Asian parents who spend years convincing their children to eschew any life skills in favor of academic achievement... and then get on their case when they end up with a boring dead-end desk job, no hobbies, and are generally miserable. Well, duh.
I grew up in the East Coast; I'd venture a guess that you probably live on the West Coast. The Bay Area/LA/Vancouver, etc.
> As a further anecdote, as a westernized Asian, "sticking" with your own kind" is not always advisable.
I grew up in Connecticut first where I was the only Asian kid on the block and hanged out with white kids. Then I moved to Washington D.C where I went to an Asian-majority high school. So I could empathize on one hand, you feeling distrust from "Asian Asian," and on the other hand, my personal experience is that my closest friends are Asians who could relate to things that my Caucasian friends could not relate to.
> I have yet to face anywhere near the same type of racial/cultural hatred from any white, brown, or black person as I have from my fellow yellows, for being "too white".
Maybe the hatred is mutual? Maybe you dislike "Asian Asians" for being "too Asian". I have to be honest, don't take it personally, but I have a extreme distrust when I meet a particularly white-washed Asian. I have yet to face anywhere near the same type of racial/cultural hatred as I have from my fellow yellows, for being "too Asian." There's saying, in America, the 1st generation tries to keep their customs, 2nd generation tries to assimilate desperately, and the 3rd generation tries to seek their roots. I'm trying to span all three generations at once.
I don't have a problem with Asians-Asians (aka FOBs). It does seem that some of them have a problem with me.
My experience with "my own people" is somewhat colorful. In an attempt to have me keep more of my heritage, my folks saw fit to send me to Chinese school when I was younger. As one of the more westernized kids there we were subject to ridicule, condescension, and outright hostility - from teachers and students alike. It was the most emotionally fucked up thing I've experienced to-date, and that's after going through the wringer of shitty/abusive college profs and evil exes. Where I grew up, whites picking on Asians was rare, and certainly never systemic. Yet I found myself at the butt end of racism, from my own kind, on a regular basis. I've been through some tough shit, but this remains the only time in my life where I've ever contemplated suicide. It is also the only time of my life where I'd considered myself truly bullied.
And more galling, the teachers were complicit, encouraging, and sometimes even participatory in this sort of thing.
It's erased any sense of racial solidarity I ever had. Prior to that point I used to actually believe that a Chinese might look out for another Chinese - after all, we were all in another country, in the same rickety immigrant boat. So much for that.
Those years have basically soured my ability to approach "Asian Asians" with anything better than a vague distrust. I do not treat Asian-Asians with hostility, but I certainly cannot readily welcome them into my circles as I can anyone else.
FWIW, I'm a 1st-gen. I was born and raised in Asia, and have every claim to my heritage as any other Asian on this continent. Yet, I've been welcomed in every single community I've ever approached except my own.
There's a silver lining though - after I got myself the hell out of that place, I diversified my social circles greatly and became more or less color-blind. I no longer hung out with the "other Asians" - even the westernized ones. I'm happy to say that my social circles span the entire racial spectrum in a way that none of the more traditional Asians I know have done.
[edit] Curious note: I have a lot of very Asian-Asian Korean and Japanese friends, and we have no trouble getting along. So it's not the Asian-ness that seems to be the issue. If I had to take a wild poke at it, I'd say it's because there's not the constant insinuation that I'm a traitor to all Chinese-kind for daring to embrace Western culture. shrug
Really? Everything I find negative has to to with prioritizing signaling over substance. The same goes for "typical" American parents. (Being a "doting" parent at the expense of honest feedback is a great example of my annoyance with the latter.)
I catch your drift but that's not a very good analogy. I seriously doubt prison is like hanging out with friends.
The amount of presumption that I have to deal with from strangers on a regular basis is still disturbing. Such interactions only comprise a small fraction of the total, but a modern urban setting is sufficiently populated to generate a regular supply. No, I look nothing like Jackie Chan. Please don't treat me like someone wearing a costume at Disney World. I'm not a cartoon and I'm not your instant Asian friend. Yes, I was born here. English is my first language. I know next to nothing about martial arts. I'm not bad but still not that good at math. No, I don't think I'm better than you, I don't need to be shown up, you're not making the world a more beautiful and better place by doing that. (Still, all of those are better than the instant Asian=target of abuse idiots or the weird psycho-sexual vibes from certain kinds of middle-aged white guys.)
I observe the little dance that people go through when they get to know each other. I notice the little verbal and non-verbal signals being passed and being noticed. I'd really like to notice more of those transactions and stop wondering about their relative lack coincident with these big globs of presumption coming out of nowhere.
Seriously? Where the hell do you live, Georgia? But, I suppose being white I don't see it.
And that psycho-sexual thing is called a "rice queen." Uh, fyi, I guess.
Granted, the girls in question seemed to be from generally poorer, low-education areas. That still doesn't excuse it in my book though.
I guess thanks for being open to the possibility. I meet so many white men in the US who are immediately skeptical of my personal integrity when I tell them of these comparatively mild forms of discrimination. Do these guys really live on the planet? Racial hatreds are involved with documented cases of lynching in the South, they were recently part of the ideological basis for regional conflicts, some where mobs of people cut human beings down with machetes in public. In a world where all that happens motivated by race, are a few racially-based onerous and idiotic preconceptions/presumptions really all that surprising?
My last 3 cities: Houston, Cincinnati, Columbia SC.
There is no doubt, the article struck a nerve for many Asian-Americans, some of which try to either validate the way they grew up or the understandable resentment of others who feel cheated from some vocation that didn't materialize because of the Math/Violin issue.
Then there is this large group of what seems to be largely white who either figured there was something there for the upbringing of their children, and those who cry abuse.
As I was raised in another country, this conversation, whether of Asian origin or Caucasian, strikes me as a genuine american cultural phenomena. There is an anxiety here about children and the way they are brought up and educated that is unmatched anywhere else that i have seen. This discussion and the discussion of yesterday about the treatment of all males as defacto criminals in their approach to children, feeds from the same root, that strikes me at times as some kind of hysterical episode.
In fact, lots of research on twins and adopted children suggests that parenting matters very little in shaping a child's personality and skills, while biology and peer groups matter a lot. Identical twins turn out quite similar regardless of whether they grow up in the same family, while adopted siblings are as different as any random people. (Check "How the Mind Works" by Pinker for a great overview.) People have a hard time accepting this, since most would like to believe that they have a power to shape their children, but this does not make it any less true.
> the Immigration Act of 1965... didn't just abolish racial quotas, it also created preference categories for science, math and engineering-trained immigrants to come over.
Ah, so Asian immigrants to the US are far from an unbiased sample of their original populations! This explains a lot more than bitter fights over parenting.
_The Blank Slate_ by Steven Pinker
http://www.cdc.gov/ace/findings.htm
http://www.frasermustardchair.ca/resources/what-does-the-evi...
First, child abuse is beyond what most would call "parenting"; that term is mostly applied to things like strictness with respect to school homework, video games, pressure to choose certain careers, etc. My argument was that those of us that care about giving their children the best should not sweat too much over where precisely to draw the lines, because the effect of these decisions on the child's personality and life outcome is minimal.
Second, it is very possible that the same genes that increase the chance of a person being a child abuser also increase the chance of their child being, say, an alcoholic or criminal.
"Lulu handed me her 'surprise', which turned out to be a card,"
writes Chua in her explosive new memoir... "More accurately, it was
a piece of paper folded crookedly in half, with a big happy face on
the front. Inside, 'Happy Birthday, Mummy! Love, Lulu' was scrawled
in crayon above another happy face. I gave the card back to Lulu. 'I
don't want this,' I said. 'I want a better one – one that you've put
some thought and effort into. I have a special box, where I keep all
my cards from you and Sophia, and this one can't go in there.' I
grabbed the card again and flipped it over. I pulled out a pen and
scrawled 'Happy Birthday Lulu Whoopee!' I added a big sour face. …
'I reject this.'"
But i'm slightly more ambivalent than he is on the subject. What Chua wrote did hit a resonant note in American cultural stereotypes, and that's bad, BUT, i don't think it invalidates Chua's points particularly either.
Chua's approach is a particular style of child rearing, but her own piece was so filled with nebulous caveats, that i found it hard to believe that anything she particularly said was rooted in being Chinese.
The real problem in the end, i guess, is just that she was an Asian woman saying these things. Not that she's got some of the overbearing qualities shared by strict mothers everywhere.
I haven't read the book, but I have seen evidence that the WSJ extracts were highly selective. In fact in the Guardian piece below, in which her children are also quoted, it says that she completely changed her approach when she realised the effect that it had. Her daughter is quoted as saying:
"The other day, I messed up a math test. I texted my mom that I got an A- and she replied, 'Who cares! Mummy loves u!'"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/15/amy-chua-...
[Edit for those who don't want to read the linked article: The Guardian piece casts the book as a confessionary "these are the things I did because I thought they were right and boy, it just made my kids miserable so I stopped" rather than the WSJ-implied tone of "this is the way I raised my kids and you wussy Westerners should do it like this or be squashed"]
I don't think Chua's initial excerpt actually said anything meaningful. It was like some sort of bizarre Rorschach test, that said very little, and upset a lot of people.
My point is, having read it the first time, i too went through the "yeah this kind of describes my childhood" thing, and then looked back at the claims, together with her caveats and noticed that there was precisely nothing one could take away from her article, except that it was an anecdote about her family, and how other people think she's a horrible person.
There was no generalizable information in her piece, and thus it was ultimately sort of an inconsequential, and self-satisfying fluff piece. What does amaze me, is the amount of time and effort dedicated to discussing her and what she's said. Given that i don't think the substance of her comments was worthy of such discussion, all i can figure is that she is controversial because of who she is and the style of the comments.
And the emotional message strikes some pretty tender nerves for those millions who either are status-anxious about how their children will end up (think of all those upper-class New York parents angling to get their toddlers into The Right Preschool), or who was raised by someone with that kind of anxiety.
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(also i just noticed i misspelled Amy Chua's name 3 times)
- a lot of Asian families are Christian, so they get Christian names
- racism and discrimination. "li guo" just isn't as cool as "pierre"
- there's no real great way to spell a lot of Asian names, so might as well just adopt a Western name
- many Asian children have an Asian name and a Westerner name. Both are valid aliases for the person.
A friend of mine from China said the main reason is that some Chinese names are hard to pronounce for an English-speaker. Also other Asian nations (Indians, for examle) seem to leave their names as is, and also give Indian names to kids, I am just wondering, is it something Chinese specific?
"Richard Kim" means I grew up in America and will have no problem talking to you.
"Han Yong Kim" means you're going to have trouble communicating with me in the workplace.
However, I have always been curious as to why Asian women have the names of white grandmas from the 1950s. The only Esthers I know are my great aunt and every other Korean-American I've ever met.
How do the Chinese name their children? By throwing their kitchenware down the stairs. Yeah, I'm really glad I wasn't one of the many Asians who had to suffer through that shitty joke throughout their adolescence (and beyond!)
Last name remains unchanged because few people use your last name as a general moniker. Also, your first name has no ancestral or family implications so is fair game, whereas your last name is special in some way.
I do know some Asians who have changed their last names though. Some by accident (immigration screwup, tranposing first/last names, etc).
Indians shorten their names sometime to make it easier for others to pronounce. I have Indian friends who have really long names that I couldn't pronounce fully and they all said just use the short names.
If you have a 字 or a 號 in this century (or even most of the last), you're very odd.
I've had one person approach me and ask why asians don't keep their names, even though they sound beautiful. Like the other comments say, fitting in to have better opportunities is far more important than having a pretty name.
It's like the saying, When in Rome, do as the Romans do. (twist: if you don't have a Roman name in Rome, you're probably a slave!)
From personal observation, it also has to do with the fact that a significant portion of Chinese immigrants last century originated from Hong Kong. Hong Kong was controlled by the British for 150 years; thus the level of English language use in Hong Kong has historically been higher compared to other Asian cities.
I'm pretty sure that all of my Hong Kong friends have had names picked for them when they were born; I wouldn't be surprised if a historian/anthropologist concludes that, indeed, that was how it all got started.
(edit: well, one could counter that Indians don't really lend themselves to English names even though India was subject to the British Empire for some time, etc.,; perhaps there are specific factors pertaining to the Chinese. Still, I do think it's important to separate out the different cases within the Chinese diaspora—mainland (urban versus rural), Hong Kong, Taiwan, expatriate/naturalized—each group has a unique history and it doesn't really make sense to try to reason about all of them at once.)