Pan-Asian American Racial Identity

Many Asian Americans take great pride in a strong work ethic and an equally strong value system in terms of educational achievement. This cultural legacy stems from a long tradition of Asians coming into America as immigrants since the 19th century. During this time, there are third and fourth generation Asian Americans that have adopted the principles of a quality education and strong work ethic as part of being of Asian descent in a primarily white Anglo-American population. Culturally, many Asians have adopted American ways of life, but the legacy of a Chinese work ethic and educational background are a major part of how they perceive success in then U.S. In many ways, the theoretical concept of the “model minority stereotype” had developed as a way to define the overt focus on education and high levels of work ethic performance as a way of life for Asian Americans now living in America.

Statistics that support this model minority theory can be found in many areas, the first being education. Fifty percent of Asian Americans 25 and older hold a bachelor’s degree compared to twenty-nine percent of the white population. Many studies have used standardized tests and school records, such as SAT, GPA, and other measures to compare the academic performance of Asian American students with non-Asian American students. Several studies have indicated that the outstanding academic performance of Asian students might be attributed to their cultural and family values. Another area of model minority success is found in the professional workforce. Asian Americans as a group work in the same place of employment as whites. This alone suggests that they have succeeded. A high percent of Asians are found at the top of professional and managerial positions. This success in the workforce has also lead Asians to hold one of the highest income figures per family by race. On the other hand, the model minority label is also seen as a myth. This label suggests that Asian Americans conform to the norms of society, do well in school and careers, are hardworking and self-sufficient. It follows that Asian Americans are a model for all groups, especially other minority groups. However, a closer look uncovers

Who are actually regarded as Asian Americans in the United States (U.S.)? Asian Americans as the public living in the United States are who self-distinguish as having Asian, in entire or in part, regardless of whether they are the U.S. or foreign born, a U.S. citizen or not, length of living residence, or in the U.S. legitimately and lawfully. Some people may say that all Asian Americans are same as just being Asians, but Asian Americans are not same as being Asians, at all. Asian Americans have totally distinctive point of view of life and they have their own lifestyles, values, ethics, norms and languages, compared to simple Asians living in their countries with a native language. In general, there

This is because Asian Americans are represented in various ways in the media. According to the textbook article, “Asian Americans were also represented as “perpetual foreigners”, as not being from the United States, as having cultural practices that are not “American,” and as embodying loyalty to a home country over the Untied States” (Drew, 2015 pg. 170). Then again the encouraging thing is that not all Asian Americans are the same, so having various representations of Asian Americans helps show viewers the many different ways Asian Americans are. But then at the same time there is a negative consequence to why Asian Americans are represented in so many ways. When thinking about what is shown on screen Asian Americans are represented so effortlessly, meaning that the media does not think Asian Americans are significant or good enough for big roles, or to even act as themselves. An example of this would be the movie Aloha, where the director made the decision to cast Emma Stone who is a White as an Asian-American

Asian/Pacific Americans are viewed as more successful than other minority groups. This has specifically cause problems for them which are called intergroup hostilities and other phrases.

According to his tri-racial order theory, Chinese-, Japanese-, Korean-, Filipino-, and (East) Indian- Americans will achieve the “honorary white” status in the newly emerging racial order, while Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotians will be absorbed into the “collective black” status (Bonilla-Silva 2004; Bonilla-Silva and Glover 2005). He points at the developing distinctions between native-born and foreign-born and between economically successful and unsuccessful Asians as well as the racialized intra-Asian preferences hierarchy to support his argument (see also Saito 1998; Tuan 1998; Moran 2001). An especially notable trend in this is the diverging patterns of economic mobility and success within the Asian group, which shows that the occupational (and consequently, socioeconomic) segregation of Asians as a racial group that once contributed to the development of the pan-Asian identity (Okamoto 2014) is no longer in place to forge a pan-ethnic identification and consciousness. The 2012 Pew Report on Asian Americans also shows that the majority of Asians in the United States does not identify with the pan-Asian label: only 19% of the sample and 22% of the US-born Asians identified as “Asian/Asian

Throughout the piece, Zia mentions several instances where the idea of Asian American identity is still emerging yet nonexistent in society. An example of this is when Zia retells a childhood memory in which she is asked by her two friends to decide if she is either black or white. She is unable to self identify with either due to not knowing her own identity at all. She then says, “...Asian Americans began to break through the shadows. By then we had already named ourselves ‘Asian American’ and we were having raging debates and fantastic visions of an America we fit into” (Zia 5). At first, she lacks a sense of the Asian American identity as it is conceptually nonexistent to her at the time. She then comments about the emergence of Asian

The Asian American success frame not only emphasizes the role of efforts, but also defines success as straight As, admission to elite universities, and the top four professions—lawyer, doctor, engineer, and pharmacist. Believing that social mobility is possible in the United States, immigrant parents ensure their children’s success by strictly adhering to this success frame. At school, Asian Americans benefit from what Lee and Zhou call the “stereotype promise”—the promise of being viewed through the lesn of a positive stereotype. Because teachers automatically associate achievement with Asian American ethnoracial groups, even the mediocre Asian American students are given the benefit of the doubt. As a result, students who are given the second chance work hard and excel academically and this often leads to their confirming of the stereotype. Thus, Asian Americans do not simply have the “right” culture to excel in the United States; the Asian American culture emerged as a result of historical, legal, institutional, and social psychological processes of various actors in the contemporary American

The United States of America is commonly known as a melting pot of different cultures and groups. Due to extensive immigration from numerous countries since the 1800’s, American society is characterized to be culturally diverse. Asian-Americans, who have a rich history in the United States, have positively blended into the American society with their inborn cultures. Asian-Americans have been identified as the largest group of immigrants with high levels of income and proper education. However, American society has traditionally been conservative and didn’t have particular interests for Asian-Americans. Instead, Asian-Americans were secluded from the activities of white conservatives and were labeled as a separate group altogether. Thus, in

Bisexual people tend to date and have preferences based on society’s terms and categories. Being bisexual can be an exemplifying experience when determining your sexuality for the first time. But being in one of the most marginalized communities within the LGBTQ it can be very hard to navigate relationships from both sides of the spectrum. “Being bisexual can be a marginalizing experience in both queer and hetero spaces” (Rogers 1). Relationships are hard, relationships are harder navigating with a non-monosexual orientation.

For my Graduation Project, I knew I wanted to focus on a social issue rarely discussed in school. A large part of my identity is my Asian-American upbringing, so I decided on a project that highlights the lack of Asian representation in mainstream media; I chose this project because it affects me every day.

Your post was absorbing. I am often confused about the different ethnic groups in the Asian-Pacific American population. The major ethnic groups consist of Chinese Americans, Filipinos, Indians, Vietnamese, Koreans and Japenese with the Chines Americans being the largest (Hays & Erford, 2014). There is a struggle with Asia Americans holding to their traditional ways while evolving new surviving skills which may result becoming isolated, enmeshed or disengaged (McCormick, Giordano, & Garcia-Preto, 2010, Landau, 1982). However, some Asia Americans are fortunate with the acculturation as they have accepted mostly mainstream American customs (McGoldrick, et al., 2010). Contextually, although those Asians Americans might engage in the United

Over the last two decades or so, the idea of queerness is one that has been utilized and considered by individuals and communities of marginalized sexualities and genders. The concept is one that has attempted to broaden and deconstruct traditional notions of gender and sexuality in order to include all of their incarnations as valid experiences and identities. Queerness endeavors to include all of those who feel they are a part of it yet, seemingly, not everyone can be queer without changing the very nature of queerness. Or can they? Queerness is a concept which resists borders and structure yet it seems as though there must be certain commonalities among all queer

Another issue with research pertaining to sexual identity is the assumption of there being binary categories, such as gay/straight, male/female, etc. Research in this area is generally dichotomized (e.g. male/female, gay/straight), which can foster rigid identity assumptions, foster homogeneous understanding of research particiapnts and results, foster a divide between ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’ behavior, as well as mask inherent variation in different groups and populations (Johnson & Repta, 2012). Bringing greater awareness to the complexity of sexual and gender identity could have transformative effects on how research is conducted. Some scholars in the social work field have begun to acknowledge and recognize the increasing evidence that sexual and gender identity are not binary categories, as well that categories might not even be an accurate way of understanding these phenomena (Burdge, 2007; Roche & Gringeri, 2010). While an understanding that the binary model is flawed has gained some traction in social work research, the majority of researchers continue to ignore and disregard this possibility, consequently reinforcing this erroneous dichotomous paradigm (Rassi, 2011). It has also been noted that critiques from postmodern, poststructural, and queer theory perspectives, as well as from individuals or groups (e.g. transgender, bisexual, intersex) who do not “fit neatly” into binary categories continue to remain essentially absent within social work

Cultural difference can be quite a challenge. However, U.S. are known for diversity, mixture of all cultures. In fact, “Asians have emerged as the fastest growing of the three major ethnic and minority populations in the United States.”(Cox, 2015) For the long term, this rising geographic