The views and opinions expressed on this site and blog posts (excluding comments on blog posts left by others) are entirely my own and do not represent those of any employer or organization with whom I am currently or previously have been associated.
Academic Version: Applying my personal experiences and academic research as a professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies to provide a more complete understanding of political, economic, and cultural issues and current events related to American race relations, and Asia/Asian America in particular.
Plain English: Trying to put my Ph.D. to good use.
As we move forward into the 21st century, I, like many other observers, predict that there is likely to be more cross-national influence and collaboration between Asian countries, similar to what the European Union has done. Previously I’ve written about some examples of this, such as closer cooperation among ASEAN countries and Korean culture becoming trendy and fashionable in China.
But this trend sometimes produces some unexpected results. Case in point, as the New York Times reports, Japanese are increasingly turning to India as inspiration to improve their own educational system:
Despite an improved economy, many Japanese are feeling a sense of insecurity about the nation’s schools, which once turned out students who consistently ranked at the top of international tests. That is no longer true, which is why many people here are looking for lessons from India, the country the Japanese see as the world’s ascendant education superpower.
Bookstores are filled with titles like “Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills†and “The Unknown Secrets of the Indians.†. . . At the Little Angels English Academy & International Kindergarten, the textbooks are from India, most of the teachers are South Asian, and classroom posters depict animals out of Indian tales. . . .
Viewing another Asian country as a model in education, or almost anything else, would have been unheard-of just a few years ago, say education experts and historians. . . . Much of Japan has long looked down on the rest of Asia, priding itself on being the region’s most advanced nation. . . .
But in the last few years, Japan has grown increasingly insecure, gripped by fear that it is being overshadowed by India and China, which are rapidly gaining in economic weight and sophistication. The government here has tried to preserve Japan’s technological lead and strengthen its military. But the Japanese have been forced to shed their traditional indifference to the region.
Grudgingly, Japan is starting to respect its neighbors.
As explained in the article, the only reason why folks like me see this as a surprising development is not because I question India’s educational excellence. Scholars already know that India has some of the best colleges in the world and as I’ve written about before, plenty of American universities are looking to tap into that educational talent.
Rather, what is surprising is that, as the NY Times article clearly notes, Japan has had a history of being rather nationalistic, chauvinistic, and perhaps even arrogant in regard to its attitudes toward its Asian neighbors. But I suppose desperate times call for drastic changes in attitude.
As another interesting item, the article notes that many Japanese are drawn to India’s rigorous educational structure because it reminds them of how Japan’s schools were structured several decades ago, which formed the foundation for Japan’s educational success up to this point.
I generally support cross-national influences and closer cultural ties between Asian countries. As an educator myself, I also generally support efforts to improve the quality of education for everyone, especially as we move forward into an increasingly competitive global economy.
At the same time, I worry when the emphasis on strict education turns into pressure to achieve material success, which in turn frequently leads to emotional stress and mental illness for young people to “become successful.” I’ve also written about how such pressures and unrealistic standards have led to fraud, suicide, and violence among those who could not meet such expectations.
The bottom line is, improving educational outcomes is good, but an obsessive drive to achieve material success at all costs is not. This is the lesson that I hope everyone — Asian, Asian American, and otherwise — will keep in mind.
I received the following email from a reader, Alvina, asking me to help publicize a political rally on Monday in Las Vegas, in advance of Nevada’s state primary this upcoming week:
Politicians to Gather in Las Vegas to Rally Asian-American Voters
I’d like to let you know about an event coming up on Monday, Jan 14th at the Chinatown Plaza (4255 Spring Mountain Road, Las Vegas, NV 89102). This is a historic event as we’re trying to get the Asian Pacific Islander community excited about the first ever presidential caucus here in Nevada.
Special guests include Senator Harry Reid, Congressman Mike Honda, Congresswoman Shelley Berkley as well as other notable Asian-American guests. We would really appreciate any help you could provide to spread the word about this event as well as perhaps covering it.
This event represents a joining of small businesses, community and political organizations to show their support for political growth of the APIA community.
The final 2007 sales numbers for the automotive industry and as CBS News reports, the big news is that Toyota has surpassed Ford to become the U.S.’s second-most popular automaker, behind General Motors:
Toyota sold 2.62 million cars and trucks in 2007, which amounted to 48,226 more than Ford, according to sales figures released Thursday. Toyota’s sales were up 3 percent for the year, buoyed by new products like the Toyota Tundra pickup, which saw sales jump 57 percent. Ford’s sales fell 12 percent to 2.572 million vehicles.
General Motors Corp. remained the U.S. sales leader, selling 3.82 million vehicles in 2007. But that was down 6 percent from the previous year as customers turned away from some large sedans and sport utility vehicles and GM cut low-profit sales to employees and rental car agencies. GM’s car sales fell 8 percent for the year while truck sales were down 4 percent.
Overall, the year was expected to be the worst for the auto industry since 1998 as consumers fretted over high gas prices, falling home prices and the economy. . . .
Toyota spokesman Irv Miller said the distinction wasn’t important to Toyota. “We don’t pay a lot of attention to rankings such as that,” he said. “It’s always nice to see the product is recognized and accepted by the consumer. The consumer’s going to be the ultimate determining factor in who the winner is.”
I’ve written before about the controversy over whether companies like Toyota should also be considered “American” companies because even though they are “Asian-owned,” they also have dozens of factories located in the U.S., employ hundreds of thousands of American workers, and many of their vehicles have enough U.S.-made parts to be officially classified as “American-built”.
But in the end, the Toyota spokesman is right when he notes that ultimately, consumers will decide for themselves who the winner is. With that in mind, it appears more and more Americans are apparently deciding that companies like Toyota are the real winners, whether the rest of America considers them an “American” company or not.
It’s clear that Muslim Americans face particularly difficult challenges in American society these days in terms of maintaining their cultural and religious identity in the face of pervasive stereotypes about them as potential terrorists. We might even say that such difficulties are even more intense among young Muslim Americans who also are trying to figure out where they fit within the frequently volatile social environment of school and their peers.
In that context, as the Christian Science Monitor reports, a new book entitled The American Muslim Teenager’s Handbook, written by a Muslim American family, seeks to provide a little help in negotiating this challenging cultural terrain:
Sprinkled with humor, the lively paperback describes the essential beliefs and practices of Islam and includes questions and comments from Muslim teens across the United States. “In addition to doing research of our own, we sent out a survey to 44 Islamic schools,” explains Dilara, who teaches at a weekend Islamic school in the Phoenix area.
They received approximately 150 responses to their questionnaire, which revealed that even teens attending Islamic schools vary greatly in attitudes and faith practices, from why they are Muslim to how often they pray to whether or not they wear the hijab, the head scarf worn by many devout Muslim women. . . .
So far, the response to the handbook has been largely positive, and even comes from beyond the US and the Muslim community. . . . The handbook exudes an AmÂÂerÂican perspective, upbeat and nonjudgmental. It encourages teens to discuss their questions and issues with parents, friends, and others, but ultimately to make their own responsible choices about their faith practice.
“The handbook is meant to provoke discussion, not be the definitive guide to Islam,” Yasmine explains. “It’s something you work out with God. No one on the outside has a right to judge that.”
From what it sounds like, the book looks to be an informative and useful exploration of these challenges faced by young Muslim Americans and I’m also glad to hear that others outside the Muslim community have also found it enlightening.
Most of all, I commend the efforts of the Hafiz family to take the initiative to speak on their own behalf and to express their own ideas and perspective about Islam, instead of sitting by and having others portray them however they want.
For those who may not be familiar with China’s Three Gorges Dam project, it is basically an effort to dam up the Yangtze River to provide hydro-electrical power and expanded shipping routes to meet China’s growing industrial needs. It is also one of the largest engineering projects in the history of human civilization. The Associated Press has an article that nicely summarizes its initial goals and its subsequent environmental impacts, both good and bad:
The $22 billion dam, the world’s biggest hydroelectric project, was supposed to end flooding along the Yangtze and provide a clean energy alternative to coal. Approved in 1992 and due to be completed in 2009, it will generate 84.7 billion kilowatts of electricity each year — the equivalent of what it takes to light the counties of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento, according to figures from 2005.
Yet along the way, more than 1.4 million people had to be moved. Though critics and experts warned the environment and people would pay too high a price, their criticisms were ignored and suppressed by a government in thrall to large engineering projects.
Even a few officials are breaking ranks to predict catastrophe. Toxic algae is blooming, feeding off industrial waste and sewage and tainting water supplies.
Experts have warned that the waters in the enormous reservoir are undermining hillsides. Water seeps into loosely packed soil and rocks, making them heavier and wetter, and can trigger landslides on steep slopes like those rising from the Yangtze. Additionally, the huge weight of the water on the rock bed exerts a pressure that can lead to earthquakes. . . .
As criticism has mounted in recent weeks along with the problems . . . the government has launched a renewed public relations campaign stressing the project’s benefits. . . . Beijing also says it will shore up the area’s environment with new measures to control pollution, close industrial and mining enterprises and monitor geological hazards.
As China prepares to host the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, its environmental record is only one of several important issues that is receiving scrutiny from the international community, and rightfully so.
I am interested to see how China responds when the spotlight of the world is shining on it. How will China respond when it faces repeated and intense criticisms about not only its environmental record but also on its human rights abuses, media censorship, lack of democracy, religious crackdowns, consumer safety, etc.?
If China wants to be considered an international superpower, it needs to have answers for these questions.
I hope many of you have already heard of Eric Byler — he was the director of Charlotte Sometimes and Americanese (an adaptation of Prof. Shawn Wong’s novel American Knees), both being critically-acclaimed independent movies.
Eric’s latest project, in collaboration with fellow independent filmmakers Annabel Park, Jeff Man, and Zhibo Lai, is entitled Project 9500 and is a multimedia documentary of the issues of illegal immigration in northern Virginia.
While much of the focus of this project is on Latino immigrants, Eric notes that Asian immigrants have been brought into the issue because many illegal immigrant critics argue that Asian immigrants are the “good” immigrants because they learn English quicker and are perceived to be more willing to assimilate into American society, as opposed to the “bad” Latino immigrants.
They are putting together a feature-length documentary film, but the project also involves short video essay clips that capture different aspects of the issue. Their YouTube site contains several dozen such video essay clips but two “introductory” clips that were recently featured in the Washington Post are below:
As I told Eric, these clips do an excellent job in capturing the individual-level emotions and institutional-level influences that are involved with such a complex and controversial issue. All signs are that their project is coming together quite nicely.
I encourage you to view some of their other video essay clips on their YouTube site and to keep an eye out for their upcoming documentary — it would be very, very interesting.
In their end-of-year issue, Newsweek magazine profiles several dynamic, “up and coming” personalities that are likely to make news in the upcoming year. Among those profiled is the only Asian American on the list — Michelle Rhee, the newly appointed chancellor of the Washington DC public school system. As the article describes, her style is getting people’s attention:
One day [in 1993] a bumblebee got into the classroom and the students were more out of control than ever. . . . When the bee landed on Rhee’s desk, she swatted it, popped it in her mouth and gulped it down. For the first time, it seemed, her students were quiet. After that day they paid more attention, even if they were just waiting to see what she’d do next. . . .
She has already piqued unions and parents by announcing plans to fire more than 100 administrative workers and close down 23 schools. “If the rules don’t make sense for kids, I’m not going to follow them. I don’t care how much trouble we get in,” she warned [Washington DC mayor Adrian] Fenty [who appointed her to the position].
No one is more aware than Rhee that she is an unconventional fit for D.C. She has never run a school district. Then there is the issue of a Korean-American running predominantly African-American schools. Rhee has tried to defuse racial tension with her blunt talk. “I bet you are wondering what this Korean lady is doing here,” she told one all-black audience. . . .
She has met with every school principal, telling those at failing schools they could lose their jobs if they don’t raise test scores. Her imperial style has irked some. “Good. I don’t want them to be comfortable,” Rhee says.
I had never heard of Michelle Rhee until I read this article, so I really don’t know anything more about her other than what the article describes. Nonetheless, I admire and support her desire to challenge the status quo and to take some risks in trying to change things around and make a real difference in her students’ lives.
If the status quo means chronic underperformance and routinely failing to live up to its mission of providing their students with a high quality education, then the status quo — and those who support it — need to be changed.
Normally I am a staunch supporter of unions (being a member of the Massachusetts Teachers Association myself), but in many cases that I’ve seen/read about, sometimes the biggest impediments to improvement are teachers’ unions, as much as a liberal like me hates to admit it.
It is indeed unfortunate when people in any organization are more concerned with maintaining the status quo for their own comfort rather than actually trying everything they can to help their students get a good education.
Of course, not all teachers are as complacent and in fact, most teachers are caring, dedicated, and passionate about making a difference in their students’ lives. Nonetheless, there seem to be too many out there who abuse the privileges and protections of their position and care more about their job security rather than their actual performance.
Therefore, I think Michelle Rhee’s strategy of shaking things up is exactly what underperforming school districts like Washington DC needs. I wish her the best success in her efforts to improve the lives of her students.
On the eve of the Iowa caucus, officially kicking off the 2008 Presidential race, here’s a post for the politically-minded.
As reflected in my article on the 2004 Elections, national-level aggregate data tends to show that in terms of political affiliation among those stating a preference, about two-thirds of all Asian Americans lean Democratic and the other third identify with the Republicans.
But as reported by Politico.com, new data from a Harvard research team shows that among young Asian Americans, the percentage who lean Democratic is much higher:
The Institute of Politics at Harvard University recently released data from an online survey of 2,525 18- to 24-year-olds. Among the survey’s more notable statistics are those concerning party affiliation among Asian-Americans: 47 percent identify themselves as Democratic, 15 percent Republican and 39 percent independent — making them more Democratic than any other ethnic group except African-Americans in the survey. . . .
Young Asian-Americans are significantly more Democratic than young whites, who are roughly evenly split between the two major parties. And Asian-Americans of all ages have been trending Democratic for years. But they were once a dependable Republican constituency. According to data from the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, former President George H.W. Bush got 24 percent more of the Asian-American vote than did Bill Clinton in 1992.
The article goes on to note that some factors that have likely contributed to this Democratic trend among young Asian Americans are the Republicans’ general negativity toward immigration (even when it’s legal) and high-profile racial incidents like Sen. George Allen’s “macaca” slur, all of which have apparently struck a nerve with young Asian Americans.
As I wrote about in my other blog on similar political trends among Latino Americans, the Republican party seems to be digging itself a pretty big hole here with these two racial/ethnic groups. Their harsh and partisan positions against immigration (yes, including legal) has clearly alienated many young Asian and Latino Americans.
What should be even more disturbing for Republicans is that Asian and Latino Americans also happen to be the two fastest-growing racial/ethnic groups in the country.
It’s a well-known phenomenon that in virtually all Asian countries, there has been and continues to be a strong traditional preference of males over females. One of the consequences of this is that pregnancies are more likely to aborted if the fetus is a girl.
According to a study released by the World Bank in October, South Korea is the first of several Asian countries with large sex imbalances at birth to reverse the trend, moving toward greater parity between the sexes. Last year, the ratio was 107.4 boys born for every 100 girls, still above what is considered normal, but down from a peak of 116.5 boys born for every 100 girls in 1990.
The most important factor in changing attitudes toward girls was the radical shift in the country’s economy that opened the doors to women in the work force as never before and dismantled long-held traditions, which so devalued daughters that mothers would often apologize for giving birth to a girl. . . .
In the 1970s and ’80s, the country threw itself into an industrial revolution that would remake society in ways few South Koreans could have imagined.
Sons drifted away to higher-paying jobs in the cities, leaving their parents behind. And older Koreans found their own incomes rising, allowing them to save money for retirement rather than relying on their sons for support.
Married daughters, no longer shackled to their husbands’ families, returned to provide emotional or financial support for their own elderly parents.
In short, because achieving a comfortable economic situation is no longer so dependent on the husband’s income, the value of South Korean wives has increased based on their own economic contributions to their families and because they are more likely to provide emotional support for their aging parents.
On the one hand, it’s nice to see that the old patriarchal notion that males are more valuable than females is beginning to reversed — that was always a sexist and discriminatory idea that unnecessarily led to much social inequality and division. In that regard, South Koreans should be applauded and their example will hopefully inspire other Asian countries to do the same.
But on the other hand, aren’t we just trading in one set of gender biases for another? In other words, while the overall status of women in South Korea has increased, much of that increase is apparently based on the expectation that wives will be primarily responsible for emotionally supporting their parents as they grow older.
Therefore, doesn’t this expectation only reinforce gender stereotypes and limit the overall life choices that women have?
I suppose you can’t change everything — or centuries of tradition — overnight, so perhaps we need to be satisfied with small, little victories, one at at a time. In other words, some progress is better than no progress.
It’s a well-documented phenomenon that wherever capitalism spreads and grows, it brings rising class inequality with it, as it makes a very small group of people very rich while keeping the vast majority of a country’s population poor or working-class. As the Christian Science Monitor reports, this process is now becoming evident in one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, India:
Since February 2007, the value of India’s stock market has doubled to 20000 points, and the biggest winners have been India’s richest. Based on these gains, India’s four wealthiest men are now worth more than China’s 40 wealthiest combined. . . .
The top-heavy distribution of India’s stock-market billions is further amplifying the extremes of rich and poor in a country where an estimated 400 million people – more than the population of the United States – live on less than $1 a day. . . .
It is partly the legacy of out-of-date laws governing stock offerings. . . When going public, India’s largest companies need to make only 10 percent of their stock available to the public. Other Asian neighbors, such as Thailand and Malaysia, usually force a company to make available 25 to 40 percent of its stock. . . .
[As a result,] only 3 million Indians – from a working-age population of 321 million – hold stocks. A further 3.5 million hold stocks through mutual funds. The numbers are small, and the money invested is also modest.
As most people should know by now, India can indeed by a land of extremes — success and riches for some, grinding poverty and subsistence for many others.
Nonetheless, since India is still in the relatively early stages of global capitalist expansion and development, my hope is that there is still time for India to put into place measures that will help alleviate or even mitigate some of these inequalities before they get extreme.
Developing countries like India have the opportunity to forge a new model of capitalism for the rest of the world — one in which hard work and monetary riches can coexist with equality of opportunity for all social classes.
In the academic and scientific research and development industries, it’s very common to find large numbers of Asian and Asian American scientists and researchers. For various reasons, a disproportionate number of Asians and Asian Americans are drawn to the sciences as a career and such fields have benefited tremendously from their work through the years.
Frustrated by stagnating federal funding for research and clampdowns on visas, Asian scientists are increasingly returning to their homelands. One-quarter of the 700,000 students who left China between 1978 and 2003 have gone back, China’s Ministry of Education has reported.
Most of those left the United States recently, with more than 20,000 a year returning to China in the past five years, according to the ministry.
In countries with blossoming economies, such as China, South Korea, India and Singapore, governments have identified biotechnology and other high-tech industries as a way to expand beyond basic manufacturing. They are spending billions to underwrite companies, build high-tech parks and help startup businesses cut through red tape.
The trend has negative implications in the United States, which has already lost much of its high-tech manufacturing to outsourcing, said Greg Lucier, chief executive of Carlsbad-based biotechnology company Invitrogen. If foreign scientists continue to leave, the United States also could lose its lead in innovation.
The article goes on to note that it’s not just Chinese scientists leaving the U.S. to return to China — it’s also Indian high-tech workers doing the same and returning to India. Also and perhaps surprisingly, this trend also involves many top non-Asian American (primarily White) scientists being lured away to live and continue their work in Asia.
It looks like the U.S. is continuing to lose its lead in terms of being the premier place for scientific education and research. We already know that American elementary and high school students increasingly trail their counterparts around the world in terms of scientific knowledge, and now we have many of our top scientists leaving to go to Asia.
Basically, the U.S. is sowing what it planted — years and decades of cuts in scientific funding to pay for wars and tax cuts for the rich, politically-motivated debates over scientific research, and a general anti-immigrant sentiment have all led to this trend.
In the end, our loss will be Asia’s gain and when “traditionalist” Americans gripe about Asian countries outcompeting and surpassing the U.S. in scientific accomplishments, they will only have to look in the mirror to find someone to blame.
I’ve posted before about the power of media images in influencing how Americans see people of color, since our society is so visually-oriented and media-centric these days. In that context, does the current television writers’ strike open up new opportunities for a more culturally diverse representation of television images for people of color? My Vietnamese American colleague and well-respected writer Andrew Lam thinks so in a recent article at New America Media:
With no writers, an onslaught of reality shows are being scheduled for January. Fox will offer The Moment of Truth, something that mirrors Guantanamo. In it contestants are strapped to a lie detector and asked about their most intimate secrets, without, mercifully, waterboarding.
American Gladiators are also back and that show is self explanatory. Then there’s Oprah’s Big Five, an ABC show sponsored by Oprah Winfrey in which contestants are to give away a lot of money for the greatest benefit of society.
Next season, it seems now certain, will be the beginning of the non-fiction era of Hollywood, where documentary and “real†personalities, rule the airwaves.
Thus minorities, in many ways, should rejoice. People of color gain strong foothold in term of representation in the New Media. Reality TV – American Idol and Survivor top among them – is the programming genre in which real demographic is more fairly integrated.
Consider too: Characters of colors don’t just get on reality TV shows, many actually win them. Jun Song won Big Brother, Vecepita Towery and Yul Kwon won Survivor, Harlemm Lee won Fame, Ruben Studdard and Fantasia Barrino won American Idol.
Asians, traditionally excluded in Hollywood, in fact, are winning quite a bit considering being a small population in the US. Vietnamese alone counted for four. Chloe Dao sewed her way to the top in Project Runway, there’s also Hung Huynh, who won on Top Chef, using fishsauce as the base ingredient. Last Comic Standing got Dat Phan, a Vietnamese American who made fun of, what else, his mother’s accent.
I think Andrew has a point and his listing of the successes of contestants of color on various reality TV shows certainly is undeniable. So on the one hand, I think it’s a very positive development that people of color are apparently becoming more popular and successful on reality TV shows.
On the other hand, I think we as a society still need to address the fundamental problem — that “mainstream” TV dramas and sitcoms still systematically exclude or marginalize people of color, particularly Asian Americans. The writers’ strike will not last forever, and once it’s resolved, is it just going to be business as usual in terms of writing virtually all-White plots?
I applaud the success of contestants of color on reality TV shows, but I urge our communities not to lose sight of the real battle — more substantive writing and acting roles for people of color — particularly Asian Americans — on mainstream TV shows.
