The invisible struggle of the Asian American small-business owner
vox.com
vox.com
If you want to pull something like that off it's best if you can keep the low status people arguing about masks and melanin.
All this revenue is siphoned from around the world so that it can be hoarded in offshore tax havens and not even taxed in the US. At least, if you rob us blind in the rest of the world, have the decency to do something useful with the money :-)
A "common enemy" dynamic is not guaranteed even when/if the enemy is a non-metaphorical enemy army. The opposite dynamic can also unfold, as well as the more common many-against many dynamic with multiple, competing, fluid alliances. See the Syrian civil war for a recent example.
When the "enemy" is a disease, disaster or somesuch... I think the opposite often emerges. In fact, these things tend to produce exactly this kind of thing. Hardening of identities, conflict between groups, blame... In Jewish history, for example, epidemics and plagues yielded some of the darkest times.
Times of plenty are better for solidarity, usually. When times are tough, people group. People conflict... unfortunately.
In either case, it's more important to be educated to know that the media is divisive, and that the only way to overcome media bias is to increase one's bandwidth of information: read all the major news outlets. Don't just rely on one news source. Get to know who owns which papers and always keep an eye out for conflicts of interest when reading about certain subjects.
The article’s discussion of the “model minority” stereotype is also a clumsy attempt at racialization. The article points to low-income Asian groups like Burmese. But those groups aren’t poor because they’re Asian, they’re poor because they’re economic immigrants and often refugees. Burmese, in particular, are the most recent major Asian immigrant group. 85% of Burmese Americans are first-generation immigrants, while 80% of Japanese Americans are native born. Less than half of Burmese Americans speak English fluently.
But Japanese Americans were also predominantly economic migrants at one point. The important question the article overlooks is income mobility. Asian kids raised in the bottom quantile of income have by far the highest income mobility of any group. 27% will end up in the top quantile by adult hood—almost double the rate for white kids. There is no reason to believe that the Burmese will be any different than say the Vietnamese. Large scale Vietnamese refugee immigration mainly occurred from 1975-2000. As a result, most Vietnamese Americans have been here 20+ years. In that time, Vietnamese Americans have achieved economic parity with whites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U.... So have Laotians and Cambodians, who immigrated, mostly as refugees, around that same time period.
I can’t help but feel like articles like this are an attempt to racialize Asians and make them identify as a marginalized minority group, instead of as individuals who are in the process of achieving upward mobility. Calling the long-standing economic trends a “myth” is borderline deceptive and risky. Clearly something is working. But if you make people think that it isn’t working, you might inadvertently break it.
In addition, racially motivated against Asian Americans are up throughout the country, blaming us for “Kung Flu.”
> Getting tested for COVID-19 didn’t seem like an option for the Rongs. The rumor was that the tests were expensive. Rong also feared the reaction from neighbors.
> “If you test positive, everyone would be scared of you,” said Rong. “Everyone would think you are the devil.”
then:
> Asian case-fatality rate nearly triple that of all other groups in San Francisco County
If a group gets tested less CFR would go up for that group.
But “Economic parity with whites” doesn’t mean sh﹡t when a racial group (edit: not even a racial group) is discriminated in college admissions, corporate leadership roles, etc., which are some of the most vital external decisions for upward mobility. (These are very widely documented so don’t ask me for citations. You can easily find hundred-comment-strong threads on these topics within this very site.) If anything it means the group has managed to “succeed” despite all the racial/cultural roadblocks, and the efforts they put in are not proportionally repaid.
“Individuals who are in the process of achieving upward mobility” — that’s the actual myth. More like work as hard as you can, we’ll randomly select three out of ten to put into the pool of potential upward mobility with all fifty of that other group.
I know some people prefer equality of outcome and don’t feel the slightest shame about pushing down hardworking folks based on their ancestries if that’s what it takes to achieve a semblance of equality and diversity. I can’t have a productive conversation with those people. Actually, you know what, I’ve hardly ever seen anyone convincing anyone on this or any other divisive topic, so here’s my opinion, I don’t care what anyone thinks about it, and I’m not gonna further comment on this.
Asians account for about 3.7% of Fortune 500 Board seats, which isn’t that far off from the 4-5% of the age cohort you’d expect to have a high level position like that. More important, they account for 8% of new board appointments: https://www.statista.com/statistics/547958/percentage-of-new.... Asian new appointments has tracked the overall percentage of population quite well for the last decade. If anything, Asians are on their way to being a bit over-represented in corporate board seats.
COVID deaths correlate a lot with obesity, that is very low among Asians.
I think you will just have to get used to it. It's the same as referring to USA as America - excluding all of South America.
Although in the US, I feel like the ethnicity question is more about pinning down what socioeconomic class you’re in, so the options will lump all of Asia together.
I am pretty sure nobody thinks of people from those countries as asian either.
It's not being asian that makes you survive Covid. It's cultural and societal habits. Go to any asian country and you will most likely see people wearing masks when they're sick. Even before covid.
Look harder. Try to catch the part that is never told, because it is too hard to be told.
But once it falls into place, your standard model will start to make sense. Americans are no different humans than any others, well, duh.
Economically us asians are doing quite well but that's not the only aspect of racism that exists. We're marginalized in different ways. It's hard to put into words what this is exactly. Quantitatively you can see an aspect of this in low asian representation in Hollywood but it's much more deeper than that. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsWTFeP1hno&t=3s
As you can see from the video it's not even about economics. It's something else that's deeper because the most insidious thing about it is that huge amount of Asian women sort of have this attitude against their own race as well. It's a subtle sentiment that no one really talks about so it comes out in different ways.
The examples are related to dating but I'm not talking about dating specifically. There is something going on terms of class divide and perspective that is influencing the dating game as a side effect. We talk about class in terms of money but clearly something else is going on with class here that is seperate from money.
It's really something that's hard to pinpoint and as a result I feel a lot of articles like this are written in place of the actual problem.
The way media & entertainment propagate the normalization of still making fun of Asians[1], affect not only Asians in America but also in Europe. (We in Europe have this weird self-perception that racism is more of an US thing, and the only resemblance of that here is either Nazis or Islamophobia.) People might not realize this but it does have a quite deep historical root [4]
One thing about the article though. Not so surprising that the (elderly) Asian Americans have low trust for the government when the government track record to them is:
* the Asians were the first to be targeted by explicit ethnic/national immigration ban[2]
* American citizen who married Asian could lose their citizenship[3].
* Yellow Peril[4]
* and now, disguised as good-will, through Affirmative action actively creating disadvantage to enter higher education. (or higher positions)
[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/131631/still-okay-make-fun-a...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_Un...
"The most stubborn misconception about this population is that its members can be uniformly measured at all. A population of 20 million strong, representing more than 50 distinct ethnic groups, Asian Americans have some of the widest variances in corporate success, education, and income."
OK, so how then do we get a coherent article about the plight of Asian American small-business owners?
Are there not a multitude of experiences?
Or is the article saying there is a common vector e.g. racial discrimination that affects all Asian-American small businesses even though they have diverse resources, experiences, distribution and successes?
Do non-Asian-American small businesses contend with similar headwinds to Asian American small businesses?
I'm not criticising TFA or disputing any data it presents - just trying to get a handle on what it is saying.
I will convert to Scientology before I accept that it's "racist" to refer to a disease by its place of geographical origin.
It’s easy to say this until you’ve had someone yell this at you on the street in order to harass you.
Just call it something else. It’s not that hard. There are lots of diseases from lots of other places that we somehow manage to refer to without tying it to the place from which it originated, or from which people think it originated.
Though yes, it's a stupid name (Wuhan Virus would be "ok-ish" in my opinion though - if we didn't know which virus it was)
Hong Kong Flu
West Nile Virus
German Measles
Guinea Worm
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
Lyme Disease (named after Lyme, Connecticut)
Ross River Fever
Omsk Hemorrhagic Fever (named after Omsk, Russia)
Ebola (named after the Ebola River)
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome
Zika (named after the Zika Forest, Uganda)
Japanese Encephalitis
Marburg Virus Disease (named after Marburg, Germany)
Or they're not named in recent times, but instead in times when using slurs was a leisure activity.
Plus the egregious case of the "Spanish" flu that might have originated in the US but Spain was unlucky to be talking openly about it.
It's important we highlight these struggles and do our part in supporting them... you might find yourself in a similar situation one day. With that I'd encourage folks to read more about BLM, Uighur concentration camps, Palestine, etc. Even if you feel powerless in stopping oppression the very least you could do is be aware and spread the word.
One thing I have a lot of trouble grasping is that the Indian population is not represented in articles addressing discrimination against "Asians", despite being a part of Asia.
East Asians have a very different culture than Indians; it doesn't really make any sense to lump them together. Dropping the "East" from "East Asian" is just being a bit lazy (because honestly, it is kind of clunky).
I'm not sure what is the proper term here. I've seen the terms "mongoloid" and "oriental" used to refer to my people but I've also seen things written about how these terms are dated and considered to be insulting. I have found no other word to refer to "asians" the way the article refers to "asians."
It's strange that it's so hard to find a term here as there is a very clear cut category here. Whatever... it's just words.
I would respond to your query and say that "mongoloids" have a very different experience with racism in the US than Indian people due to a multitude of factors one of them being that most Indians already know English.
Qualitatively speaking, in the software world Indians are easily dominating that arena over "mongoloids" so it's a completely different experience.
Whatever hardships Indian people are going through would imho warrant a completely separate article to cover that topic.
In the UK “Asian” definitely includes people from the Indian sub-continent. See the BBC Asian Network for the example.
Also your claims about genetic similarities and differences between races will need some supporting evidence as they sounds very much like personal opinion.
No, that's just colloquial usage of the term "Asian" in America. The official definition we use in America is the same as the UK version.
>Also your claims about genetic similarities and differences between races will need some supporting evidence as they sounds very much like personal opinion.
This is pretty common knowledge. "Mongoloids" branched off on a different ancestral line somewhere during the migration out of Africa. It happened roughly around the middle east with "mongoloids" migrating east on the north side of the himalayas and Indian people moving east to the south. The genetic markers when sampled from populations actually display this genetic separation geographically. In fact the grouping of Indians and "mongoloids" is far more natural and appropriate than the term "Asian"
This is pretty common knowledge from different facial features between Indians and Asian people. But if you want to get technical there are actually genetic markers that correlate geographically with racial physical features. The marker for "mongoloids" is called Haplogroup C-M217, also known as C2 (and previously as C3). It is a Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup. It is the most frequently occurring branch of the wider Haplogroup C (M130). It is found mostly in Central Asia, Eastern Siberia and significant frequencies in parts of East Asia and Southeast Asia including some populations in the Caucasus and Middle East.
The haplogroup C-M217 is now found at high frequencies among Central Asian peoples, indigenous Siberians, and some Native peoples of North America. In particular, males belonging to peoples such as the Buryats, Evens, Evenks, Itelmens, Kalmyks, Kazakhs, Koryaks, Mongolians, Negidals, Nivkhs, Udege, and Ulchi have high levels of M217.
I want you to take a look at this picture:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Haplogru...
The picture represents the frequency of the historic appearance of Haplogroup C-M217 among native populations with white representing very very low frequencies and the legend in the picture representing higher frequencies.
You will note that C-M217 is basically almost never shows up in India and is highly correlated with the geographic distribution of "mongoloid" facial features found from China going all the way to Native Americans in North America.
Now examine Haplogroup L-M20. Haplogroup L-M20 is also a human Y-DNA haplogroup, which is defined by SNPs M11, M20, M61 and M185. As a secondary descendant of haplogroup K and a primary branch of haplogroup LT, haplogroup L currently has the alternative phylogenetic name of K1a, and is a sibling of haplogroup T (a.k.a. K1b).
The presence of L-M20 has been observed at varying levels throughout South Asia, peaking in populations native to Balochistan (28%), Northern Afghanistan (25%) and Southern India (19%). The clade also occurs in Tajikistan and Anatolia, as well as at lower frequencies in Iran. It has also been present for millennia at very low levels in the Caucasus, Europe and Central Asia. The subclade L2 (L-L595) has been found in Europe and Western Asia, but is extremely rare.
The picture of the haplogroup linking Europe and India is illustrated here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Distribu...
You will note that this haplogroup extends from India across the middle east into Europe which is consistent with the ancestral migrations of prehistoric humans and also with the caucasian features that Indians and Europeans share.
The story is more complex than this however. These Haplogroups only represent frequencies of two genetic markers. In reality what we interpret as race is an amalgamation of many many genetic and physical features. An individual needs to only have an average amount of these features for our visual cortex to recognize someone as "mongoloid" or "indian."
Because I chose to use a singular genetic marker to show the correlation between physical features, genetic features and geographic distribution you can actually find a flaw that arises from the use of a single genetic marker: Although japanese people and chinese people look alike, they do not share Haplogroup C-M127. Go ahead and look at the picture again above... you will see that japan is white, indicating a very low frequency of haplogroup C-M127 despite physical similarity. The reason for this is outside of the scope of this topic.
That being said it is still possible to find correlation between genetic similarities, physical features and geographic distribution with just two haplogroups because the correlations are very very high. This response serves as proof to show that what I said isn't my opinion. It is more representative of your lack of knowledge misleading you to believe that I am stating my opinion rather than a commonly known fact.
Most people know how use vision and sight to identify these genetic similarities just by looking at faces. It's totally obvious to normal people. However,some people get so politically correct that they lose the ability to to use common sense to see these similarities. People like you... For these people we need to use raw science to show you just how misguided your thought process is.
I’m not sure there’s any need to cheapen your point by making personal attacks.
I’ve made no mention of political correctness anywhere.
My flawed argument was based on India and China sharing a land border and that shared genetic markers are found on both sides of it.
I’ve been shown convincing evidence elsewhere in the discussion and I’ve conceded that I was wrong.
I’m quite happy to be in the group that takes “raw science” over “common sense” as you put it.
This is not flawed reasoning. Despite Indians and Chinese people possessing unique genetic markers, people in India and China do still share genetic markers from earlier haplogroups. If you go far enough back into human ancestry we can find a markers arising out of Africa that all humans in Asia and Europe share.
>I’m not sure there’s any need to cheapen your point by making personal attacks.
It's not a personal attack. I assume your conclusions are irrationally influenced by the current "woke" trend that's taking over America today. I say this because my conclusion can be arrived at trivially with zero technical jargon.
The same conclusion can be derived from just looking at people. The similarity in facial features between Indians and Europeans and the marked contrast between Chinese and Indians makes my expose into the genetics quite unnecessarily pedantic. It hinders conversation by forcing me to go into details in order to state the obvious.
Correct conclusions can be arrived at in significantly less time if people utilized a combination of common sense and scientific evidence where it is deemed necessary. If I didn't choose to troll this thread with a mile long document of terminal evidence then very likely this conversation would have ended without a real conclusion despite the obvious fact that Indians and Chinese look different enough to be classified as following different branches in the ancestral tree.
Well, yes, American media are going to use the American definition of "Asian". This is an article on Vox, not the BBC.
> In the UK “Asian” definitely includes people from the Indian sub-continent.
It is my understanding that the UK term isn't more inclusive, it just refers to subcontinentals instead of orientals, since for historical reasons that's who's present in England.
> Also your claims about genetic similarities and differences between races will need some supporting evidence as they sounds very much like personal opinion.
Don't be ridiculous. Yes, Indians are much more closely related to whites than Asians are. You don't need to support basic well-known facts.
Recall that Indians were usually "white" under US law (there are some exceptions) until pressure from Indian activists in the Nixon administration got them reclassified.
I’m sorry but that is not a “basic well-known fact” that is just conjecture.
Dubious, now repealed, racial laws are not a sound basis on which to hang an argument.
If you want to make that claim stick you’d need to do a peer reviewed comparison of DNA and prove it.
If you really want to play this game consider that China and India share a border.
Where do the people 20 miles on either side of that border fit in your racial hierarchy?
Wrong both times.
> If you want to make that claim stick you’d need to do a peer reviewed comparison of DNA and prove it.
Seriously, it's been done. Your personal massive ignorance is not a good argument for anything.
> If you really want to play this game consider that China and India share a border.
Yes, the Himalayas. It's one of the most formidable, uncrossable borders in the world.
If you pick a different haplogroup such as O-M122, which is believed to have originated in China, you’ll see that is highly present in northern India showing that that border is porous, Himalayas or not.
Have a look at some ADMIXTURE results from HGDP data: https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article/figure/image?... . (I pulled it from https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/jo... )
Notice how the modal component in Indian groups is the "Europe" component. Notice how the East Asian groups share almost nothing with the European groups.
And the next time you want to have an argument in public, please try to make sure you know at least a little bit about the topic. Come on.
Thank you for posting links to supporting evidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_people
Also, see this section, which provides an overview of what "Asian" means in different parts of the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_people#Meanings_by_regio...
If someone thinks arabs are not 'Asian' is just as dim witted as an Asian saying: Bah! america-shamerica Non-whites are not American.
Then that person might be the US Census Bureau, which defines (or, rather, has had defined for it) the following racial categories (and more, but these two are relevant to the discussion):
“White – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.
⋮
“Asian – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.”
https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html
This also basically reflects the general use of the terms in the US, except that a lot of people would would consider Semitic people to be two additional separate races and not part of White, and/or would separate out those from the subcontinent as distinct from “Asians”. It's important to understand that while some of the racial terms have names of continent, they are about a particular model of racial identities, not continental boundaries.
So the world has much more sense than to take it's cues from the US, in these matters atleast.
Not sure why it's relevant to bring up how far the continent of Asia extends when it's a reference to people and culture rather than geography.
Yay for the oppression olympics, whoever claims the most oppression the loudest gets attention. All you're incentivizing is increasing claims of oppression, not any improvement. Admitting any improvement would hurt the position.
Moreover, I don't really believe the primary sources in this article.
I feel like it's a clown land.
No one except a few people around the world knew anything might be up in December. The first death was reported in January.
But Vox can't challenge an Asian restaurant owner over a timeline because of white privilege I assume.
Anyone who denies this has forgotten roof Koreans and the effects that the LA riots (and that the BLM riots today) are having on Asians.
EDIT; people downvoting me need to see reality. This stuff is reported in Asian outlets all the time, but the American mainstream media will tell you sweet stories of Asian business owners 'supporting' BLM riots. You have to remember that these people, including my parents, have come from countries where it is normal to publicly say whatever you need to to appease the majority group. My mom and dad, like most Asians, will say whatever needs to be said to keep their family safe, even if they disagree. Americans do not understand Asian culture at all.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1190650.shtml
https://www.npr.org/2015/04/30/403231749/baltimore-unrest-re...
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/black-lives-matter-billboa...
Indeed. Also from the 2015 Baltimore riots: "Looters Take Everything But a Family’s Pennies / Chinese store-owners and a soldier who fought in Afghanistan both return to find their hometown transformed into a war zone." https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/34cu4j/baltimore_loote...
It is hypocritical when the authors paint themselves as concerned with the plight of an identity category, but downplay negative outcomes when it contradicts their agenda. From my perspective this shows how little these supposedly compassionate voices actually care. They're simply exploiting the situation to score political points.
This isn't unique to Asian-American identity politics. If you look you can find it across the entire spectrum of identity politics. The obvious solution in my view is to concern ourselves with the plight of individuals as individuals, not members of a specific tribe. Treating individuals equally was at the core of liberalism, but today it has been overtaken by philosophies that put membership in an identity category before the individual. The outcome is predictably divisive and toxic.
Why plural? There's only one major party in the US that did not condemn the violent riots and looting. “They’re not gonna stop. And they should not.” -- Kamala Harris, VP candidate
Edit: never mind, I did my own googling. Looks like Kamala Harris did indeed condemn the rioters:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-harris-idUSK...
And the quote above was indeed referring to protesting, not rioting:
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/01/fact...
Yes, evidently, unless you arrest and prosecute the rioters and looters, which is something "progressive" DAs refuse to do.
> did indeed condemn the rioters
If you read the article, you will see that she did not. She said that they "should not be confised" with protesters, but did not condemn them explicitly. Nor could she condemn, because the official democratic narrative is that the protests are "fiery but peaceful", which they're anything but.
I don't see your great point in posting this.
Hell, IIRC, the whole Cali gun ban thing is because a certain group of white people didn't like black people legally walking on the capital with guns. Imagine if they would've wanted to make an example out of roof Koreans as well.