Comments

1. atlasien wrote:

   “Among the general population, 45 percent believe Asian Americans are more loyal to their countries of ancestry than to the United States, up from 37 percent in the 2001 survey.”

   That’s a 22% increase in racist fear.

   I would like to see a graph of perceptions of loyalty of Asian-Americans over the course of many decades. The peaks would be depressingly cyclical:

   1940s: war with Japan
   1950s: war with North Korea/China
   1960s: war with Vietnam
   1970s: more war with Vietnam
   1980s: “Japan buying out America” scare
   1990s: fairly quiescent
   2001: 9/11 jacks up racial paranoia across the board

   If there is another major conflict with an Asian country in the next few years, military or economic, Asian-Americans will still be vulnerable.

   Posted 28 Apr 2009 at 1:19 pm ¶

2. Luis wrote:

   There was a study in 2005 here at Yale that indicated that Americans rank Latinos and Asian-Americans well behind whites and blacks of other ethnic backgrounds in scales of “American-ness.”

   I don’t think the demographic shift is going to alleviate this as much as we’d expect, unless it’s accompanied by an attendant change in cultural production (can we have an all-white sitcom like Friends when non-Hispanic whites are no longer a majority?) and political representation. We’ll see.

   Posted 28 Apr 2009 at 1:56 pm ¶

3. Alston wrote:

   @Luis: All white sitcoms in “post-white” America?

   Shit, yes. And they’ll consider themselves subversive and edgy.

   Posted 28 Apr 2009 at 3:40 pm ¶

4. Aishtamid wrote:

   It’s interesting to compare surveys like this to much older ones when the first “white ethnics” like Jews, Irish, Italians etc. first came to the U.S. Back then, they weren’t considered fully “white” or American. Italians especially were stereotyped as having no desire to really contribute to America, much as Latinos are now. But after World War II the amount that mainstream American mistrusted them went slowly downwards on a linear scale, to the point where it now barely exists.

   I wonder if this will ever happen with Asians or Latinos. Admittedly, the U.S. has had many conflicts with Asian countries as Atlasien mentioned which will skewer these surveys. And the U.S. has not fought a majority white country since the Cold War, possibly excepting Serbia/Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

   The optimist in me wants to think that someday these differences can be smoothed over. After all, it hasn’t been that long since Latino and Asian immigration started in earnest. It took sixty or so years for white America to trust “white ethnics.”

   Posted 28 Apr 2009 at 3:53 pm ¶

5. Evan wrote:

   In response to Atlasien, the “bad guy” of the coming decade will be China. There won’t be military conflict between the USA and China. But I expect more anxiety from Americans regarding China’s growing economic stature in the world. If China owns most of our treasury bonds, there might be an assumption that Beijing will be calling the shots regarding US foreign and domestic policy. Next thing you know, our kids will be forced to learn Mandarin and we will be forced to become Mao-worshiping Communist drones. Maybe the yuan will replace the dollar as the currency of choice. EEEEEEK! This will definitely get the FOX News viewers riled up.

   Posted 28 Apr 2009 at 4:14 pm ¶

6. Soude! wrote:

   I wonder if the general population surveyed also includes Asian-Americans. That would probably make the results for the non-Asian population seem less xenophobic. It would be interesting to see how other minority groups perceive Asian-Americans.

   Posted 28 Apr 2009 at 5:24 pm ¶

7. sisternebraska wrote:

   Viewing Asians as a monolithic group in terms of culture is definitely racist, but I’d like to point out that “not being able to tell Chinese people apart” is more a byproduct of living around white people than it is a means of picking out racists. I like to think of myself as pretty “integrated”, but I had to teach myself how to tell apart Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Thai/Vietnamese, etc. when I moved to the city. When you grow up around an entirely white population, you grow up learning to tell people apart by hair and eye color. But when hair and eye color are all very similar, it’s a learned skill to start considering shape of eye/skin tone and other factors.

   Not being able to tell apart cultures is definitely bad. But not being able to tell apart races? It’s just something most people in a white minority culture can’t physically do unless they’re trained.

   Posted 28 Apr 2009 at 7:38 pm ¶

8. Meg wrote:

   Interesting – I haven’t seen similar research in australia but would be very curious to see how it would turn out. I suspect a similar level of suspicion about where their ‘true’ loyalty lies. A recent illustration of the effects of these attitudes – our defence minister was recently “associated with a mysterious Chinese businesswoman” which was enough to kick off a huge stink over the level of influence China has on our politicians, was she a spy, was it improper, were we at risk, etc. All of course helped along by our PM being fluent in Mandarin and therefore able to converse with members of the Chinese government (shock horror). I think manchurian candidate got thrown around as well, just in case the subtle “oh, so you are friends with a chinese person” weren’t enough.

   It was an interesting exercise in doing just enough to stir up old 19th century “yellow peril” ideas while holding back a fraction so that it was hard to accuse someone of outright racism. I feel sorry for the poor “mysterious chinese businesswoman” who’s just minding her own business and then suddenly, as far as i can tell, for her ethnicity and ethnicity alone has come under fire.

   Posted 28 Apr 2009 at 8:53 pm ¶

9. j wrote:

   @aishtamid: Asian immigration began in the 1870s (mostly Chinese) and picked up pace in the 1880s and 90s. As for Latino “immigration”… well, so many (Mexicans) were crossed by the border after the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848. My point being, Asians and Latinos have constituted a significant and visible portion of the U.S. population for a while (at least in the western part of the country). There were already many significant and established Chinese American and Mexican American communities by the time increased immigration from Asian countries and Latin American countries occurred in the 1960s. All that to say, folks have been here for a while and still haven’t gained the kind of acceptance given to the Irish and the Italians back in the day.

   Posted 28 Apr 2009 at 10:39 pm ¶

10. RCHOUDH wrote:

    So if a significant number of non-Asian Americans still harbor suspicions over Asian-American loyalty despite the fact that all those wars fought in Asia have been done and over with years ago, then no wonder people continue to obstinately harbor suspicons towards Muslims.

    And all the data indicating the lack of Asian American leaders in politics and business should put to rest the “model minority” stereotype. Unless someone brings up the other stereotype that Asians/Asian Americans are still model minorities because they never question (white dominated) authority…

    Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 5:38 am ¶

11. Jess wrote:

    One thing that isn’t clear at all is whether anyone broke things down between the “old” Chinese and Japanese Americans — the folks who were all pre WW II immigrants whose families date from 100+ years ago, and those that don’t. I would bet money that you would see a vast, vast difference in where they are economically and socially if you break it down that way.

    Also, @altasien — careful about polls like that. It’s a snapshot of a complicated phenomenon, and I’m not sure it tells you what you think it does. For instance, there’s a difference between what I would call racism that is wide and racism that is deep. I could have asked that question about Arab Americans over several years and gotten wildly divergent answers depending on the year.

    For instance, post-2001, a high percentage of white Americans would probably have doubts about their loyalty, right? But if you asked about Muslims and Arab Americans you’d get a different answer, and pre-2001 you would get a blank look from loads of people who would say “You mean there are Arabs here?”

    Or, in New York, people would probably say they hadn’t considered the question at all because most Arabs that people see (in Manhattan) are the guys running the food cart and small retail outlets, and those aren’t politically charged occupations. (And a lot of people like the guy at the food cart).

    In that sense, Anti-arab/anti-Muslim attitudes are widely held, but they aren’t a deep part of the American psyche. I mean really, how many people really thought that much about Islam pre-2001? Not many. It just wasn’t a part of the national discussion in the way it was afterwards.

    During the Vietnam War there wasn’t, for instance, a particular prejudice against Vietnamese in part because there weren’t all that many in the country. I’d say in this sense it’s harder to whip up racist attitudes about people you never see or meet. (Think of how tense things get when “those people” whoever they are, happen to move into the neighborhood). The attitude I remember was more “wow, the poor Vietnamese are escaping the evil Communists” when they came here. (In Boston’s Chinatown the Vietnamese restaurants all had the old red and yellow RVN flags for years).

    And most people didn’t associate Japanese or Chinese Americans with them — it just didn’t come up. Nobody was calling for a boycott of Chinese businesses or attacking Japanese people.

    In that case, the fear of Communism was the motivator, and the anti-Asian racism was a secondary effect. I mean, there was never much of a concerted effort to vilify Koreans (they were on our side — at least in the South) and the Vietnamese were in the same situation.

    While many people have fears about China, I haven’t seen it translate into the kind of inchoate craziness you got in WW II, partly because we aren’t at war with them. And the fact that they own a lot of Treasury bonds puts them in the position of depending on us as much as we do on them. (A kind of mutual death-embrace for our respective economies, if you will — the Chinese ministry of Finance can’t afford for the price of T-bills to drop too much). That kind of stuff is pretty abstract for most people, I think.

    And even with all the “Japan is buying out the US” stuff in the 80s — I mean, how quaint does that seem now? It was again a wide attitude, but not a deep one as it pretty much evaporated by 1988.

    I’m not trying to say that Asians don’t experience racism, by the way — just that the picture gets complicated by tenure in the US, the official position of our government viz. the country involved, and the concerns that most Americans of whatever color are going to have on a given day.

    Representation rates in any field to me are at best a crude measurement. After all, Filipinos are over-represented in the nursing field (as a percentage of the workforce when you compare the occupations Filipinos are in and the rest of the population as well as how many Filipinos are in the US) and that doesn’t mean that medical professionals and hiring managers are less racist — there is a lot of other stuff going on there.

    Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 7:52 am ¶

12. atlasien wrote:

    @Jess: “And even with all the “Japan is buying out the US” stuff in the 80s — I mean, how quaint does that seem now? It was again a wide attitude, but not a deep one as it pretty much evaporated by 1988.”

    It doesn’t seem quaint to me at all, since it led to me receiving massive amounts of racist abuse for years in school. It also caused the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American, in 1982. As a Japanese-American, I’ve been told to go back to China. I’ve also been called a “gook” by a mentally ill Vietnam vet.

    You really need to try looking at the big picture instead of isolating each historical fact separately. On one hand, you’re accusing other people of placing too much importance on racism because they don’t have a sophisticated and objective grasp of history and sociology… and then on the other hand, you’re making sweeping, totally subjective generalizations like “In that sense, Anti-arab/anti-Muslim attitudes are widely held, but they aren’t a deep part of the American psyche.”

    If you think the numbers are wrong, break out some statistical analysis.

    @sisternebraska: telling Asians apart physiologically is really not important. It’s a red herring. What the survey is discussing is willfully refusing to tell us apart on the basis of different culture and history.

    The equivalent would be meeting and Irish person and calling them a German. Then when it’s mentioned they’re Irish, saying, “Irish, German, they’re all the same”.

    Many Asians can’t tell other Asians apart, physiologically. Koreans, Japanese and Northern Chinese are all very closely related and about as hard to tell apart just by looking at faces (that is, using no other cultural cues like body language or clothing) as Irish and Germans are. Also, a lot of Southeast Asian countries are multiracial… I don’t believe anyone who says they’re an expert at telling Asians apart, in fact I assume they’re full of it.

    Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 9:57 am ¶

13. Evan wrote:

    In response to Meg:

    There is simmering anti-Chinese hatred in many Asian nations such as Indonesia and Philippines. Ethnic Chinese were labeled as scapegoats during the economic crisis of the late 1990s in Indonesia. You had rioters looking to kill anyone of Chinese descent in Jakarta. Persons of Chinese background were never really accepted into the native culture of the various Southeast Asian countries.

    Life is better for Chinese people in Australia despite a few brain-dead, xenophobic comments from white Australians.

    Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 11:01 am ¶

14. Thea Lim wrote:

    @ Evan

    I don’t think it is constructive to straight up compare the racial dynamics of SEAsian countries and settler/Euro colonies like Australia, the US and Canada and draw conclusions like “life is better for them in Australia.” There are extremely different histories, especially when you talk about racial bias between different groups of colour as opposed to talking about racial bias between white settlers/immigrants and non white indigenous folks/immigrants.

    There is definitely a lot of bias towards Chinese people across SEAsia. However they are disenfranchised in the same way they are in the US, Canada and Australia because they often hold a lot of economic and political power. Again not to say the bias doesn’t exist. But it is within a completely different context.

    Also I noted the article is about Asian Americans: Indonesians and Filipinos are also Asians.

    Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 1:07 pm ¶

15. Sobia wrote:

    @Jess:

    “In that sense, Anti-arab/anti-Muslim attitudes are widely held, but they aren’t a deep part of the American psyche. ”

    Now although I can see what you’re saying, I still remember growing up and constantly being irritated by the negative, racist and Islamophobic depictions of Muslims and Arabs in North American media pre-9/11. Muslims and Arabs have always been vilified by the West, whether it be the US or other Western nations. This is not something that started after 9/11. It just got more intense after 9/11 and more people became aware of Muslim and Arab presence in North America. Otherwise, we’ve been vilified for quite a while now. Even as a child I knew mainstream North American media saw us as terrorists.

    Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 2:34 pm ¶

16. Ruchama wrote:

    I wonder how much of this has to do with perceptions of how recently Asians immigrated. I went to school with a lot of Asian kids, and many of them were not born in the US, and none of them had parents who were born in the US. And actually, now that I’m thinking about it, I realized that I personally know only two Asian-Americans who were born in the US before 1975 — everybody else is younger, and born to immigrants.

    I wonder how the answers to the question about loyalty would be different in places where people are more used to interacting with American-born Asians (and Asians whose families have been in America for a while) versus places where most Asians are immigrants or first-generation American.

    Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 3:12 pm ¶

17. silverkris wrote:

    Great points, ya’ll.

    The ethnic dynamics in Southeast Asia are complex and vary from country to country. In Thailand, the ethnic Chinese don’t suffer so much from discrimination or resentment but that may be because the Sino-Thais are pretty much assimilated into Thai society/culture for the most part.

    In Singapore Chinese are the majority(about 70%), and they have political and economic power there. In Malaysia, the ethnic Chinese represent about 30-35%, are economically as a group better off as the majority, but get discriminated against in terms of representation/selection for school spots, government or state run companies, etc., thanks to the policies favoring native Malays (bumiputras). You’ll find a lot of Malaysian Chinese spending a lot of money to send their children overseas for education because of the limited spots for university admissions for Chinese.

    In Indonesia, a lot of the corporations/business groups were run by ethnic Chinese like Liam Sioe Liong, often well connected to Suharto, until he fell out of power. Chinese culture is generally restricted in Indonesia, and many ethnic Chinese have localized their names.

    The Philippines is a bit better in terms of acceptability/cultural integration and political power – Cory Aquino’s family is ethnic Chinese, for example. There is some resentment around, however, though it doesn’t go to the extent of official policy of discrimination as in Malaysia or Indonesia; rather, you’ll see more kidnappings get aimed at ethnic Chinese families as they’re perceived to have more money/income.

    In all of the SE Asian countries you’ll find prominent business persons of Chinese descent, which contributes to the perception of Chinese being the “Jews of Southeast Asia”, though of course, most ethnic Chinese in those countries are not wealthy.

    Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 3:13 pm ¶

18. Aishtamid wrote:

    @j:

    Fair points both. I wasn’t counting the Mexicans incorporated in the Southwest after the war since they aren’t really immigrants, no more than Native Americans are immigrants. But it’s a good point to bring up – perhaps it’s about being Latino rather than being an immigrant per se. It remains that until the 1960s or so, there was very little Latino immigration in most of the country outside the southwest. In my state, Massachusetts, the Latino population was minuscule before 1960 but has since skyrocketed.

    I also didn’t mean Asian as specifically Chinese or anything, J. I appreciate the reminder about the anti-Chinese prejudices of the 19th century.

    It seems interesting that acceptance and suspicion of POCs are “cyclical” and never seem to go away fully and those of white immigrants are linear – there is equal distrust at first, but white immigrants are allowed to integrate.

    @Sobia – agreed. There was plenty of stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims at my Hebrew school as a child long before 9/11.

    @silverkris – I assume that the Chinese are “the Jews of Southeast Asia” because, you know, they’re all rich and pushy right? It’s funny how stereotypes like that exist in places like the Indonesia or Malaysia where have never been Jews.

    Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 5:09 pm ¶

19. Aishtamid wrote:

    *places like Indonesia or Malaysia where there have never been Jews. Epic typing fail.

    Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 5:13 pm ¶

20. Ei wrote:

    @Evan

    There is already indications that China is doing exactly that, trying to dethrone or at least create a sphere where US dollar is not the standard trade currency.

    Unless China crashes and burns somehow, chances are good China will come out of this economic crisis whole lot stronger than before. No idea how much this will affect Asian Americans when inevitable xenophobia sinks in.

    Posted 29 Apr 2009 at 11:45 pm ¶

21. Samia wrote:

    I really hate that all Asians and Asian-Americans get lumped together. We come from different cultures, traditions and race. Bah. “Asian” is not a race, and it’s not some generic experience.

    Anyway, this post disappointed me. There are much better articles out there demonstrating the obstacles many Asians/-Americans face here in the States. In fact, I’d go as far as to say this report downplays some important issues, especially re: scientific academia and our perceived inability to rise above the status of glorified technicians. The issue of sweat equity is a serious one, IMO. I work in a laboratory and can’t help but notice that all the PI’s around here are always white (usually also male) and their workers are overwhelmingly people of colour (mostly from Asian and African countries). I dunno. I am having doubts about this “well-represented in faculty” thing.

    I think Asian issues in academia go back to stereotypes about creativity/leadership ability. For women, it’s a double bitch. I read a book a while back called “‘Strangers’ of the Academy: Asian Women Scholars in Higher Education” (edited by Guofang Li , Gulbahar H. Beckett) which is a collection of articles written by Asian-identified women in various disciplines. Also, “Whiteness: The Communication of Social Identity” (edited by Thomas K. Nakayama, Judith N. Martin) contains one or two essays written by Asian academics. Both are *amazing* reads, if anyone is interested.

    Posted 30 Apr 2009 at 2:30 am ¶

22. Jess wrote:

    Altasien, I didn’t say the numbers were wrong, per se, just that I’d be interested to see how some dynamics play out when you break down the data more, and I haven’t seen any studies that do that really finely. Maybe you can’t, I dunno.

    And I am not trying to pooh-pooh your experience or any of that. But the plural of anecdote isn’t data, however painful that stuff may be.

    And I am trying to get across that your timeline — and the reasons for some anti-asian racism — aren’t necessarily so cut-and-dried. Perhaps my use of the word “quaint” was wrong, but the point stands: how many people have you heard talking about the Japanese economic threat? Leaving aside the stuff you hear from people at work or school, I haven’t seen any of the pundits who used to talk about that daily say anything about it, in fact the Japanese economy has been in a funk for 15 years.

    So while the fears of Japanese economic power lead to things like the UAW having their members smash Japanese cars or even the death of Chin, it’s interesting that the racism pointed at Asians no longer incorporates any of that. Now it seems to me to have shifted a lot to fears of China.

    But even so — and even despite the best efforts of the Glenn Beck crowd — it isn’t like the Chinatown here in Manhattan (or Brooklyn and Queens) has had gangs of white youths repeatedly making trouble a la 1940 in Japanese neighborhoods, and there simply isn’t the kind of rage that I saw from people in the early 80s.

    @sobia — i work in the news business, and one of the things you start to notice is patterns of stories. Back in the day (the 90s) we had stories about Islamic terrorism crossing the desk at the AP, but when it was mentioned it was always about Israel, Pakistan (when that was even in the news at all) or relatively minor incidents in the scheme of things. (Yes yes I know they aren’t minor to the people involved, I’m talking about when you have 1,000 stories crossing the desk in a night 5 people killed in a minor criminal action in a country the US has little interest in isn’t something that gets an editor’s attention). Back then the big deal was OK City, ISrael, and when terrorism came up it was relatively isolated incidents.

    Fast forward to 2000s, and the situation is very, very different. Islamic (or “International”) terrorism is the story.

    That’s the kind of stuff I mean. which is why i say it isn’t a deep part of the American psyche the way attitudes about black people are. There just hasn’t been enough interaction or enough time for things to harden in that way yet.

    Posted 30 Apr 2009 at 6:25 am ¶

23. Jess wrote:

    correction: “a la the 1940s”

    Posted 30 Apr 2009 at 6:44 am ¶

24. queerhapa wrote:

    Jess, do you not remember that after the OK City bombings, folks immediately started blaming Arabs and Muslims, only to learn that it was a white American militant dude responsible? This was 1995. Do you not remember “Back to the Future” (1985), “Not Without My Daughter” (1991), “Delta Force” (1986) or dozens of other pop cultural references portraying Arabs, Muslims, and Middle Easterners as the evil other? This has been part of the American consciousness since long before 9/11. I don’t know why you’re so quick to dismiss that.

    Posted 30 Apr 2009 at 9:28 am ¶

25. atlasien wrote:

    @Jess: “And I am not trying to pooh-pooh your experience or any of that. But the plural of anecdote isn’t data, however painful that stuff may be.”

    Excuse me, I forgot that your second-hand anecdotes are more objective than my anecdotes, maybe because I’m not a journalist (and by the way, are you a journalist? I seem to remember you mentioning that once…)

    Did I ever say that anti-Asian racism was worse now than it was in the 1940s, which is the position that you seem to have assigned to me?

    Like I said, if you have a problem with the stats, address the stats. Break out some serious historical trends and create meaningful parallels and equivalencies.

    Posted 30 Apr 2009 at 11:22 am ¶

26. Samia wrote:

    I’d like to add to my previous comment, if I may. Perhaps I seemed to be harping on the specific issue of Asians in scientific academia (I want to become faculty, and brown female Asian professors are kind of few and far between). The heart of the problem is that we are perceived as one monolithic block of successful, wealthy (existence of poor Asians is generally ignored), hardworking, quiet, apolitical people with no problems of our own.

    The perception that we’re already “equal to” whites is especially harmful in light of issues of sweat inequity– it still takes a non-white person a longer time and more education to earn the same income as their white counterpart. This is the issue I was trying to get at. My apologies for not tying it together.

    Posted 01 May 2009 at 12:09 am ¶

27. Daniel wrote:

    I read this in another blog/website, and went ahead to skim through the report (slideshow) regarding this topic. Unless I’ve really mis-read it or saw something different, my general impression is that this report is very Chinese-oriented. More like it was refering to that mostly that particular group and their unique concerns. It briefly mentioned other Asian-American groups (not just East/South-East Asians) more as a comparison, rather than as a over-all general study.

    The report didn’t mention about the physical characteristics of Asians like how they look, even though it’s often implied or generally assumed. However, it touches on other aspects of demographic groups, such as their traditions, language, political/cultural attitudes, etc. which need physical descriptions. It sort of goes further than just the “their bodies look different” reason for such study.

    Since I haven’t critically read much regarding other demographic groups I can’t say much, but any article or report regarding Asian Americans (or their specific ethnic-cultural identity) really needs to be view with a lot of different angles.

    This group is enormously diverse, a point that really needs to be stress again and again. So many different collective identities and sub-groups within them. Generally speaking, the life experiences of many Asian Americans are quite fluid. It is so hard to speak of them in any collective sense, because their social concerns are both unique and/or relates to everyone, minorities, whites, elite, poverty, immigration, etc.

    Posted 04 May 2009 at 1:41 am ¶