Hashtag Sparks Discussion about Asian American Discrimination

• • "model minority", Asian Americans, racism

Over the weekend, the hashtag #NotYourAsianSidekick exploded on Twitter, trending for more than 24 hours, with over 45,000 tweets in less than a day.

This hashtag, started by writer Suey Park (@suey_park), inspired Asian Americans and others to share their thoughts on the multiple ways Asians are marginalized.

People tweeted about diversity within the Asian community, language, stereotypes, body image, immigration, media representation, and other topics. Although the conversation was initially about Asian American feminism, the hashtag clearly had global appeal and tweets poured in from around the world.

On Monday, a counter-hashtag #AsianPrivilege appeared. Twitter users deployed this hashtag to claim that Asians experience relative privilege as compared to other people of color. Many of the people behind this counter-hashtag appear to be trolls tweeting from new accounts. Nevertheless, the sentiments behind these tweets are widely shared as many people believe that Asians and Asian Americans do not face discrimination.

As a sociologist, I think it is best to turn to the evidence: Do Asians face discrimination? The labor market is one of the best places to take this question because this is where many people believe Asians have reached parity with white Americans.

Asian Americans have among the highest earnings in the United States. In 2013, Asians’ median weekly earnings were $973, as compared to $799 for whites, $634 for blacks, and $572 for Latinos. It seems as if Asians do not experience discrimination. However, these aggregate numbers hide many disparities.

First of all, Asian men earned, on average, 40 percent more than Asian women. The gender gap between Asian men and women is the highest of any racial group. Secondly, these numbers hide the diversity within the Asian community: the 2000 U.S. Census reports Hmong women had an average weekly earnings of just $389 per week – putting them far below average. Whereas Chinese and Indian men earn more on average than white men, the opposite is true for Laotian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Hmong men. In sum, some Asians earn more than whites, yet this is the case for only some nationalities – those that have, on average, higher levels of education.

Chinese and Indian Americans have higher educational attainment than their white male counterparts. This helps explain some of the earnings disparities.

Studies that take into account educational achievements find that Asian men earn less than their white male counterparts. Sociologists ChangHwan Kim and Arthur Sakamoto found that if you compare white men to Asian men with similar characteristics, the white men often earn more. In other words, if an Asian American man and a white man both live in New York, both went to selective universities, and both studied engineering, we could expect that the Asian American man would earn, on average, 8 percent less than the white man.

The fact that Asian Americans do not earn as much as white men with the same qualifications points to the fact that Asian Americans face labor market discrimination. In other words, there is a real monetary cost to being Asian American. Over the course of one’s career, this disparity can amount to significant amounts of money.

Labor market discrimination against Asians is not unique to the United States. A study conducted in Australia also uncovered labor market discrimination against Asians. Alison Booth and her colleagues conducted an audit study where they sent 4,000 fictitious job applications out for entry-level jobs, where they varied only the last name of the applicant – thereby signaling ethnicity.

The results were that the average callback rate for Anglo-Saxons was 35 percent. Applications with an Italian-sounding name received responses 32 percent of the time – with only a small statistically significant difference. The differences were starker for the other groups: indigenous applicants obtained an interview 26 percent of the time, Chinese applicants 21 percent of the time, and Middle Easterners 22 percent of the time. According to these findings, Anglo-Saxons would have to submit three job applications to have a decent shot at getting a callback whereas Chinese applicants can expect to submit five.

This labor market discrimination – both in hiring and in compensation – stems from stereotypes about Asians and Asian Americans. These stereotypes were frequently mentioned on Twitter over the past few days.

People on Twitter pointed out the perpetual foreign-ness of Asian Americans:

My answer to the popular question "Where are you from?" is "My mother's uterus." (People must not understand biology.) #NotYourAsianSidekick

— Amber Ying (@diabola) December 16, 2013

Others pointed to the exoticization of Asian Americans:

I need Asian American feminism because we're constantly reduced to being exotic and fetishized. Stop diminishing us. #NotYourAsianSidekick

— Maureen (@maureen_ahmed) December 15, 2013

Many of these stereotypes are perpetuated by mass media.

Darrell Hamamoto analyzed representations of Asians and Asian Americans on television between 1950 and 1990. He found that Asian men were often represented in US media as asexual or effeminate, whereas Asian women were often portrayed as hypersexual. Hamamoto contends that network television negatively influences popular perceptions of Asians.

Although Asians make up five percent of people in the United States, in 2011, they only accounted for two percent of all television representations. The combination of few representations of Asian Americans in mass media along with stereotypical representations work to feed these stereotypes.

The hashtag #NotYourAsianSidekick clearly struck a chord with people around the world both because of the discrimination people of Asian descent face as well as because of the fact that this discrimination is rarely discussed in public forums.

Prescriptive Racial Stereotypes of Asian American Leaders

• • "model minority", academic, Asian Americans, education, stereotyping, white elites, white racial frame

In an article entitled “Why So Few Asians are College President,” Dr. Santa J. Ono, President of the University of Cincinnati, indicates that he finds himself among a very small group of Asian American leaders in higher education: only 1.5 percent of college and university presidents are Asian American and 3.4 percent are administrators in higher education. By contrast, Hispanics comprise 3.8 percent of presidents and African Americans hold 5.9 percent of these roles. This pattern also holds true for the corporate sector, such as the low representation of Asian Americans as corporate officers and members of corporate boards.

Why are Asian Americans so underrepresented in leadership roles? Ono suggests two major factors at play: cultural differences deriving from home environments that value preferences for indirect communication, emotional restraint, and an egalitarian view of power as well as contradictory perceptions about Asian Americans such as being conspicuous but self-effacing, hyperambitious but timid. Frank Wu, Chancellor of the University of California Hastings College of the Law, similarly points out that the model minority myth transforms positive qualities into negative attributes: intelligence is seen as lack of personality, family-oriented as clannish, and hard-working as unfairly competitive.

Ono, however, points to significant new research by Jennifer Berdahl and Ji-A Min at the University of Toronto that sheds light on the particular barriers Asian Americans face in leadership roles. Berdahl and Min distinguish between descriptive stereotypes or generalized beliefs about what members of different racial groups are like and prescriptive stereotypes which, when violated, are likely to provoke social disapproval and backlash. Since East Asians in North America are often descriptively stereotyped as relatively competent, cold, and nondominant, Berdahl and Min identify “nondominant” as a prescriptive stereotype that, when violated, causes negative consequences in the workplace. As a result, when East Asians remain in subordinate, nonleadership roles, and do not try to assert their own viewpoints or ideas or take charge, the competitive threat to valued resources they pose is neutralized. Through a series of four studies, the research findings reveal that not only did East Asians report more racial harassment at work than other employees, but, more importantly, those individuals that violated racial stereotypes were more likely to be the targets of such harassment. Berdahl and Min report that the negative responses to dominant East Asians did not depend on gender and appeared to be unique to this racial minority group.

This promising line of research on prescriptive stereotypes helps explain the hurdles faced by Asian Americans in their efforts to attain leadership positions and how these stereotypes can influence their ability to break through the so-called “bamboo ceiling” or what Sylvia Ann Hewlett calls “the marzipan layer” just below the upper rungs of power.

The notion of prescriptive stereotypes can also apply to the challenges faced by other racial minorities and women when they violate expected stereotypical behaviors and experience backlash. As Santa Ono notes, unconscious bias may be more difficult to address in academe where intellectual fairness and rigor are already presumed to be present. In this regard, he aptly suggests that academe focus some of its energy, acuity, and empathy toward tearing down existing social and psychological barriers to success, “particularly those all the more imposing for being invisible.” Perhaps greater understanding of the influence of prescriptive stereotypes will provide the opportunity for reexamination of the impact of subtle, unconscious bias on organizational processes and allow us to develop truly inclusive definitions of leadership capabilities.

Nelson Mandela: The Invisible History of Indigeneity

• • Africa, freedom and equality, indigenous, Native American

A few years ago, I was in conversation with American Indian Movement leader Russell Means when the subject of Nelson Mandela randomly came up. I said something along the lines that Mandela was such a unique inspiration of groundbreaking political ideas. Swiftly, as is the custom of Indian elders, I was rebuked. Mandela, I was informed, was the man he had been raised to be. His ideas were those of indigenous peoples around the world. Long held, time tested.

His uniqueness was that white people actually listened and tried out those ideas. His uniqueness was not in his ideas, it was in his ability to interact with the white world while still thinking and being the tribal chief he had been raised to be. His great accomplishment in the face of overwhelming assault: “He did not let whiteness invade his mind and his heart.”

Nelson Mandela(Image source)

The admonishment to me was that I had in fact succumbed to the white portrayal of Mandela. Honestly, if I ever knew, I did not consciously incorporate the information that Nelson Mandela was raised in the tribal society of the Xhosa. He was assumed to be a future leader of his people and trained for that eventuality. I had often marveled at how seamlessly his quotes about the land and the people and the values of humanity coincided with those of my native elders. However, I had never put together the fact that this was because he had listened and absorbed the same teachings from his native elders.

Only the release of Leonard Peltier could have inspired more joy and celebration in Indian Country than Mandela’s release from prison in 1990. See Peltier’s response to Mandela’s death here.

Mandela joined the call of many around the world for the release of Leonard Peltier. Mandela and most indigenous people see no difference between the circumstances which led to the formation of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and reasoned, sometimes violent, defense of life and liberty from government sponsored terrorism and the formation of the African National Congress (ANC) and the decision, made by Mandela himself, to form the military wing called Umkhonto we Sizwe, or the Spear of the Nation.

Mandela was released after 27 years for defending his homeland from segregation, violence and murder by an oppressive white government. Leonard Peltier has served 40 years for doing the same. Three U.S. presidents will travel to South Africa to honor Madiba, an indigenous freedom fighter. All three passed up the opportunity to free Leonard Peltier.

Leonard_Peltier(Image source)

Writers in Indian Country have challenged President Obama to honor Mandela by honoring his wish to see Peltier freed.

When he was elected the first black and indigenous president of South Africa, there were acknowledgements at all of the ceremonies in Indian Country of how “our brother” has assumed his rightful place as leader of his freed people. White education and white frames conditioned me to hear this in the same way as the accolades from white liberal groups around the world or the inheritors of white colonials in governments across the globe. It was not the same. Nelson Mandela was celebrated in Indian Country as an indigenous tribal leader, acting true to his hereditary teachings, elected to preside over a modern colonial nation state. It was as if an aboriginal leader had been elected Prime Minister of Australia or Canada.

It was as if Russell Means were elected President of the United States. Native leaders, particularly traditional leaders, saw this as a validation that indigenous ideas could survive and rise in a post colonial world. He was one of us. He stayed one of us. And he made them see us and hear us.

Mandela the man and South Africa the nation have been seen as a hallmark of race relations between blacks and whites around the globe and particularly in the United States. These are important, obviously. Musa Okwonga, British black poet and activist, provides a wonderful view of this with a simultaneous takedown of the whitewashing of Mandela entitled “He will never, ever be your minstrel.” Nelson Mandela’s kinship with people like Malcolm X and Dr. King are secure enough to survive this onslaught of white platitudes.

Madiba’s indigenous identity and ideas have, as is always the case, been whitewashed to invisibility. His constant references to the beauty, importance and identity marker of the land in his famous speeches and quotes are not viewed as the universal perspective of indigenous peoples everywhere. They are seen as inspiring quotes of a singular nature from a unique iconic figure. Chief Seattle and many other indigenous leaders have talked of the land and the people in this way for centuries. I am grateful to have lived in a time when the world listened, if only briefly and partially, to Nelson Mandela speak from an international microphone with the voice of an indigenous person. I am grateful that these words, if not their historic context, will be replicated and available for all to absorb.

As president, Mandela proposed the revolutionary “new” idea of truth and reconciliation to take the nation from its bloody past to its unified future. This idea relied heavily on the indigenous African tribal concept of ubuntu. (See Bishop Tutu’s explanation of this in No Future without Forgiveness or this extensive rundown of its meanings and application with a video from Mandela himself explaining it.)

Ubuntu has its corollary in most indigenous groups. The Lakota say mitakuye oyacin, meaning everything is related or we are all one. The ideas of forgiveness and survival with dignity have been echoed by many indigenous leaders toward white oppressors. A particularly poignant rendition is this message from a Choctaw chief in 1832 preparing to relocate his people on the long Trail of Tears that would see more than half of them die. If you listen, you will hear Madiba from prison refusing to be freed while his people are banned, President Mandela as he talks of South African reconciliation and retired global icon Mandela as he discusses how every man should have a house in sight of where he was born. Perhaps, you will hear as indigenous people hear through the cacophony of whitewash which obliterates indigenous people, land and ideas.