I hope you will excuse my tardiness (found this article just now) and still be able to find my comment relevant.
Upon reading both the initial post and this one, I must confess an incredible but resigned sadness. It was a sadness born of reading a blog titled 8Asians and yet finding part of my Asian identity completely erased by your claim that this report is somehow incontrovertibly "good news" for the Asian American community. How is this claim that Asian American men have the highest average salaries going to affect the Khmer American (Cambodian) community, 40% of which don't even finish high school? Forty Percent. Another 24% graduate high school but never attend college. I assume you can guess as to the impact that has on the community’s overall average salary. Does that mean Khmer men somehow less than Asian, less than men, or simply less than? It is not simply that wealth and education vary widely among individuals of a race, but that wealth and education vary widely among the various ethnic communities of a race; a fact which is too often lost when our smaller, less powerful communities of Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders are subsumed into the success stories of our larger, more vocal communities of East Asians and South Asians
If you're willing to bear with me through a personal anecdote, I'll attempt to explain why the stance taken in your posts is problematic. I'm a fairly recent graduate of a very large university (for credibility’s sake, I will say that it was 1 of the UC schools; but for privacy’s sake, I won’t say which, fair?). At my university, we have an alliance of Student Advocacy Groups that have historically worked for the advancement of marginalized communities; it binds together groups as diverse as the Muslim Students Association and the Queer Alliance, the Afrikan Student Union and the Vietnamese Student Union. As you can imagine, this alliance is old and valued and storied, but it isn’t without its tensions. ASU and VSU in particular have a tense relationship with regards to VSU’s projects. You see, VSU has always been a political organization as well as a cultural one, and it hosts several projects focused on encouraging SE Asian matriculation to college as well as SE Asian student retention and empowerment in college. ASU has expressed its belief that these projects serve no purpose as Asian students as a whole do not have problems with college matriculation or retention.
Understand that I am not attacking ASU in any way; it’s an incredible organization that does great work on difficult issues. What I am attacking is this belief in the educational and economic prowess of Asian Americans that is so widespread it is found everywhere from blog posts written by Asian Americans for other Asian Americans to activist organizations at top tier universities.
In recent years, VSU has slowly been giving up ground in its identity as a political organization. As for the reasons behind this, I can only speculate. It might have nothing to do with pressure from ASU; it might have to do with its members internalizing the beliefs that Asians generally do well in society and need no help; or it might have to do with the changing politics of VSU’s member makeup. The only thing I am certain of is that ideas matter and words matter. If you make the time to contribute to blogs, I believe you know that.
Our lives will always be a negotiation of intersecting identities; your college graduate identity affects your Asian identity which affects your male identity which affects your gay identity which affects your father identity and so on and so forth. Your musings about these identities typically give rise to eloquent and poignant writings that I’m glad you share with us. But in this case, your identity of belonging to an ethnic community of which 25% have a graduate/professional degree allowed you to overlook, to disregard our Khmer community of which only 3% have a graduate/professional degree. I’m not saying that I want to break down the diverse Asian American community into its component ethnicities. I’m not even saying that you should never make broad generalizations of Asian Americans at large. I’m just saying that the next time someone, especially a marginalized someone, takes issue with either your point or your presentation of it, please listen to his/her pain and try to understand its genesis rather than simply dismissing it as an “attack” on you.
*Notes: 1) My statistics are obtained from the US Census Bureau and the US Department of Education and are rounded to the nearest 1's place for simplicity. 2) I must admit that I found Tim Wise's words on the model minority to be invaluable and some of his ideas from <http: confusionethic.html="" www.lipmagazine.org="" ~timwise=""> may have unconsciously entered my overly verbose comment. 3) I really am sorry about my overly verbose comment; I tried to edit it down in length but found myself unable to cut anything.</http:>
Upon reading both the initial post and this one, I must confess an incredible but resigned sadness. It was a sadness born of reading a blog titled 8Asians and yet finding part of my Asian identity completely erased by your claim that this report is somehow incontrovertibly "good news" for the Asian American community. How is this claim that Asian American men have the highest average salaries going to affect the Khmer American (Cambodian) community, 40% of which don't even finish high school? Forty Percent. Another 24% graduate high school but never attend college. I assume you can guess as to the impact that has on the community’s overall average salary. Does that mean Khmer men somehow less than Asian, less than men, or simply less than? It is not simply that wealth and education vary widely among individuals of a race, but that wealth and education vary widely among the various ethnic communities of a race; a fact which is too often lost when our smaller, less powerful communities of Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders are subsumed into the success stories of our larger, more vocal communities of East Asians and South Asians
If you're willing to bear with me through a personal anecdote, I'll attempt to explain why the stance taken in your posts is problematic. I'm a fairly recent graduate of a very large university (for credibility’s sake, I will say that it was 1 of the UC schools; but for privacy’s sake, I won’t say which, fair?). At my university, we have an alliance of Student Advocacy Groups that have historically worked for the advancement of marginalized communities; it binds together groups as diverse as the Muslim Students Association and the Queer Alliance, the Afrikan Student Union and the Vietnamese Student Union. As you can imagine, this alliance is old and valued and storied, but it isn’t without its tensions. ASU and VSU in particular have a tense relationship with regards to VSU’s projects. You see, VSU has always been a political organization as well as a cultural one, and it hosts several projects focused on encouraging SE Asian matriculation to college as well as SE Asian student retention and empowerment in college. ASU has expressed its belief that these projects serve no purpose as Asian students as a whole do not have problems with college matriculation or retention.
Understand that I am not attacking ASU in any way; it’s an incredible organization that does great work on difficult issues. What I am attacking is this belief in the educational and economic prowess of Asian Americans that is so widespread it is found everywhere from blog posts written by Asian Americans for other Asian Americans to activist organizations at top tier universities.
In recent years, VSU has slowly been giving up ground in its identity as a political organization. As for the reasons behind this, I can only speculate. It might have nothing to do with pressure from ASU; it might have to do with its members internalizing the beliefs that Asians generally do well in society and need no help; or it might have to do with the changing politics of VSU’s member makeup. The only thing I am certain of is that ideas matter and words matter. If you make the time to contribute to blogs, I believe you know that.
Our lives will always be a negotiation of intersecting identities; your college graduate identity affects your Asian identity which affects your male identity which affects your gay identity which affects your father identity and so on and so forth. Your musings about these identities typically give rise to eloquent and poignant writings that I’m glad you share with us. But in this case, your identity of belonging to an ethnic community of which 25% have a graduate/professional degree allowed you to overlook, to disregard our Khmer community of which only 3% have a graduate/professional degree. I’m not saying that I want to break down the diverse Asian American community into its component ethnicities. I’m not even saying that you should never make broad generalizations of Asian Americans at large. I’m just saying that the next time someone, especially a marginalized someone, takes issue with either your point or your presentation of it, please listen to his/her pain and try to understand its genesis rather than simply dismissing it as an “attack” on you.
*Notes: 1) My statistics are obtained from the US Census Bureau and the US Department of Education and are rounded to the nearest 1's place for simplicity. 2) I must admit that I found Tim Wise's words on the model minority to be invaluable and some of his ideas from <http: confusionethic.html="" www.lipmagazine.org="" ~timwise=""> may have unconsciously entered my overly verbose comment. 3) I really am sorry about my overly verbose comment; I tried to edit it down in length but found myself unable to cut anything.</http:>