Soooo...since my first blog post was an absolute brainspill of ridiculousness and you all probably think I'm completely insane now, here's a more...level-headed one. I've been thinking of posting this for a while; it's an essay on Asian stereotypes that I wrote last year and was published in our school newspaper.

I think it's appropriate for this site. You know, Asianfanfics and all. :)

It's not too long, and I think it's relevant to a lot of different people right now, not just Asians. Please feel free to tell me what you think after reading it, I'd love to discuss this issue in detail with anyone.

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“The stereotype for Asian and Asian-American students is that they are academic machines. But…we see a lot of emotional pain here. We see the human side of that and those stereotypes keep people from seeking care.”     –Gregg Eells

Stereotypes are a form of discrimination, albeit a less severe version than segregation, so no one really wants to admit that they have them. After all, isn’t America a country of equality, free of predispositions? Sure, that’s the ideal. But let’s face it: stereotypes about Asians are expressed every day just on the high school campus. If I had a nickel for every time someone cracked an Asian joke (“Yo Teresa, cook me up some eggrolls with your mad ninja skillz!”), or credited some success of mine to fact that I’m Chinese (“It’s just ‘cuz you’re Asian.”), or expressed any type of stereotype in general (“Dude, he’s Asian, he doesn’t have to study.”), I might have enough money to pay for college already (so good-bye, Scholarship Stress).

In all seriousness, though, why are Asians seen as “academic machines”? Most likely, it’s because the vast majority of those stereotypes are founded on truth, even if the truth is stretched. The word “stereotype” itself is a combination between the Greek word, “stereos”, meaning “solid”, and the French word “type”, meaning “type”. Its first meaning was “an image perpetuated without change”, and the World English Dictionary defines it as “a set of inaccurate, simplistic generalizations about a group that allows others to categorize them and treat them accordingly”. When said like that, one can’t help but see the race on a whole as a group of robots that can be sorted and stacked like cargo. And is it fair to treat all members of a race with the same preconceptions? The answer is no, but it happens.

Too often, I come across fellow Asians who are thoroughly disheartened by fact that they don’t fit into The Asian Mold. They aren’t taking advanced Math courses, or three different Sciences, have a hard time fiddling with numbers in general, and know that getting a near perfect score on the SAT’s is just unrealistic for them. Consequently, they become weighed down by a feeling of failure from not meeting expectations. That’s where I think the main issue is.

Records from Cornell University show that thirteen of its twenty-one suicides dating from 1996 to 2006 were by students of Asian descent, when only fourteen percent of Cornell’s student body was listed as Asian American. The pressure placed on these students is incredible. Many of the parents of Asian Americans emigrated from their respective Asian countries, where competition was harsh and studying had to be done without allowing for free time if they just wanted to get into a college. Naturally, the expectations that those parents put on their children are high. After all, they worked so hard to get to America; their children had better take advantage of the fortunate circumstances they were born into. It’s no secret that these parents push their kids to work harder than most of their peers. Rewards aren’t given out for doing well, but if your grades drop, you must not be working hard enough, you failure. Couple that with getting enrolled into an academically rigorous school such as Cornell, and you’ve got yourself the perfect formula for a stressed-out, self-loathing college student.

One could argue that all of the above is a stereotype as well. It is. Not all Asian students are pressured so harshly. However, based on personal experience, the fact remains that most are. The academic dedication that is rooted in most Asian cultures grows up with the child. They are also taught from a very young age to set themselves apart from their classmates, because their circumstances are so very different and they shouldn’t compare themselves to those white kids. What’s more, the media encourages that kind of thought. Movies and television constantly portray their Asian characters with similar characteristics, making them noticeably different from their Caucasian characters. A memo from the Media Action Network for Asian Americans states several. For instance, Asian Americans typically show an inability to assimilate to American culture, and are constantly either given unintelligible accents or a lack of knowledge of the English language at all. There is also use of the deus ex machina that is, “Well look here, this was caused by a mysterious magic from the Far East and that should sufficiently explain everything for you”, because apparently that can account for all strange happenings. Opportunities for white actors are also significantly greater than those for Asian actors. I recently watched a YouTube video, by the Asian Youtuber Kevjumba, which addressed this issue. He talked about the live-action movie Dragonball Evolution, based off of Dragonball Z, a show which was a favorite among little Asian children because the hero was, for once, Asian. So why, in movie founded on a show that was so distinctly Chinese, were nearly all of the main characters cast as Europeans? Taking the words of Kevjumba, “are Asians really that lame”? Does Hollywood think that if they cast a Chinese teenager as the main character of a show, no one will want to watch it? Pop culture portrays Asians as nerds who cannot assimilate into the “cool” American culture, while the parents at home consistently urge their children to try even harder to excel above their white peers. Growing up in that kind of environment, it’s no wonder that so many Asian children feel like they’re not good enough.

Most of the Asians that I know can take Asian jokes in stride and freely laugh at gags about Asian parents and stereotypes. But we’re also not robots, programmed to fit just one mold and purpose, and we’re definitely not homogenous (even if I can’t count the number of times I’ve been mistaken for another Asian girl). Therefore, we shouldn’t be pressuring ourselves above the level that each of us can take. Most stereotypes are not malicious in nature, but when they’re taken too seriously, they can make a person degrade themself into a being with so much less individuality than they actually have. The problem is not inherently with the stereotypes, but with how students apply them to themselves and how much they let them affect them. So take six AP’s, but don’t quit your favorite sport in order to do so, just for the sake of taking six AP’s. Strive to perform at your best, but think realistically and don’t make yourself miserable doing it. When we look across the country at the yellow skinned population, maybe we’ll see a mass of dark hair and small eyes. But let’s also make sure that, when looking beneath outside appearances, no one will possibly be able to mistake one Asian for the one standing next to them.

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Thoughts?