I question whether it's worthwhile to hold all this mental baggage about being a small minority group in the U.S. I think the U.S. is certainly good for some things, like career advancement or if you are ultra ambitious but for daily living it's the pits if you're non-white. I'd say this goes for blacks and hispanics too but they are such a larger percentage of the U.S. population that they have their own established presence and supportive community in society whereas asians do not.
Plus right now the U.S. economy is falling down hard with a fairly uncertain future. I don't think the country will collapse or anything but it's heading towards mediocrity and stagnation fast. This makes it even less attractive to be a minority in the U.S.
The most useful thing about the U.S. is the passport and potential business opportunities. Other than that there's not much else.
To be honest if I was given a choice to be born and live as a middle class person in any Asian country or in the U.S. I would have chosen Asia. I'm glad my life turned out the way it did but when I see how middle class asians live in countries like Thailand I am pretty envious.
Don't be an angry Asian
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momopi
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“Don’t be an Angry Asian� revisited, part 1
About 5 years ago, I wrote a couple blog posts titled “Don’t be an Angry Asian. My motivation for writing the post was partly due to the Virginia Tech Massacre of 2007. Asian American men are statistically late bloomers. Although the vast majority (82%) do eventually get married by mid to late 30’s and become productive citizens [1], this doesn’t address the smaller % that are left behind and feel bitter about their experiences.
Like the original, this post will be arranged by topics of interest, in areas such as Asian American portrayal in American film and television, interracial dating/marriage, socioeconomic factors, and so on. It’s fairly free-formed, and I’ve tried to include as much references as possible. Enjoy.
Asian American portrayal in movies and television
In my original post written 5 years ago, I wrote about how Asians are typecast on American movies and television. The example given at the time was Masi Oka, who played Hiro Nakamura on NBC’s series Heroes [2]. Hiro is short, nerdy, wears glasses, speaks English with an accent, and wields a katana in the TV series. To be fair, the character is Japanese and not “Asian American�. A better example may have been Harold & Kumar, where John Cho (Harold) and Kal Penn (Kumar) are both Asian American characters [3].
Although portrays like Hrio Nakamura are heavily stereotyped, there is a subtle change from what you might have seen decades ago. In Season 2 of Heroes, where Hiro played the role similar to an Asian sidekick to a white male character “Kensei� (an Englishmen in Samurai armor), Hiro was the one who actually gained the girl’s affections (Yaeko).
In the recent AMC TV series “The Walking Dead�, we see the Asian character “Glen� (Steven Yeun) being portrayed as an Asian American and former pizza delivery boy [4]. He is not “foreign�, speaks English fluently without an accent, ended up in a relationship with a pretty white girl Maggie (Lauren Cohan), and it was Maggie who professed her love for him first. When Maggie’s father Hershel referred to Glen as “that Asian boy�, his daughter corrected him with “he has a name, he’s Glen�.
Now, I’m not saying that Asian American men are getting alpha male roles in American film and TV, but things are changing slightly. Asian American actors like Steven Yeun in Walking Dead, or Daniel Dae Kim in Hawaii Five-O [5] no longer have to speak in an accent and act foreign to get roles. Fans of AM/WF fiction might want to check out recent books by Kate Furnivall [6].
On Interracial Marriages
Asian men often complain about Asian women dating outside of their ethnicity. However, recent trends show a small decline in Asian American interracial marriages. In 2008, 30.5% of Asian Americans married interracially, versus 27.7% in 2010. The overall percentage of Asian American women marrying White men has declined, while marriage with other Asian ethnicities (Pan-Asian) has increased. You can compare the statistics between 2006 and 2011 here:
2006: http://www.asian-nation.org/interracial-2006.shtml
2011: http://www.asian-nation.org/interracial.shtml
I’m not going to say the trend is good or bad. Suppose if you’re an Asian American guy who is single and cannot find a GF. Just because 3% more Asian women choose to “play on their own team� doesn’t mean that you’re going to get a GF. I’ll comment on the topic of increasing your sexual market value later. For now, I’ll just say that you shouldn’t read too much into statistics and numbers. For example, there was an article published in 2008 that claimed AM/WF couples are 59% more likely to divorce [8]. Upon closer inspection, we find that their study had a sample size of 1,606 men and 4,070 women with a small % of Asians.
A much larger study published in Feb 2009 with sample size of 23,139 couples (46,278 people) showed that AM/WF and WM/AF divorce rates were roughly equal. Asian/White marriages are more prone to divorce than AM/AF couples, but less likely to divorce than WM/WF couples [9]. What do all these numbers mean to you? Do you see yourself as a person instead of a dot on a chart? Rather than worrying about what percentage of people did what, you should be investing your time and efforts in finding, and improving your relationship with your GF or spouse.
A decline in interracial marriages in the US is not necessarily good or bad, depending on your perspective. From pro-assimilation point of view, it’s normal for immigrants and their children to marry and assimilate into the mainstream. The efforts of Asian parents sending their children to Chinese/Japanese/Korean language weekend schools in US can be described as a losing battle against the tide of eventual assimilation.
However, from a globalization perspective, you could say that the rise of Pan-Asian identify and return of many Asian Americans to Asia for education, employment, and finding their spouse to be part of the regional-globalization trend. Many of my Asian college friends have moved back to Asia for work. Members of my extended family from Taiwan have found themselves posted to Shanghai and Hanoi for work.
The world is a big place, if and when I marry and have children, I’d probably send them to Chinese language school, and take them abroad to visit/live in different Asian cities. Rather than trying to cling to some measure of cultural heritage, I think of it as broaden my children’s opportunities. When they grow up, who’s to say that they’d live and work in the US?
Finally, if you’re an Asian American male looking to hook up with a white girl, the American dating scene can be quite competitive. It’s easier if you can find white girls who are already interested in Asian language, culture, music, film, TV, etc. Alternatively, you can also try going abroad to Europe. When I was in Paris, I observed quite a few local AM/WF couples. The opportunity is there for young Asian American males who are good looking and willing to relocate and learn French. Opportunities also exist in other parts of Europe and the world.
References:
[1] http://www.census.gov/population/www/so ... s2006.html
[2] http://www.nbc.com/heroes/
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_%26_Kumar
[4] http://www.amctv.com/shows/the-walking-dead
[5] http://www.cbs.com/shows/hawaii_five_0/
[6] http://www.katefurnivall.com/
[7] http://news.yahoo.com/interracial-marri ... 51085.html
[8] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 0491.x/pdf
[9] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 582.x/full
About 5 years ago, I wrote a couple blog posts titled “Don’t be an Angry Asian. My motivation for writing the post was partly due to the Virginia Tech Massacre of 2007. Asian American men are statistically late bloomers. Although the vast majority (82%) do eventually get married by mid to late 30’s and become productive citizens [1], this doesn’t address the smaller % that are left behind and feel bitter about their experiences.
Like the original, this post will be arranged by topics of interest, in areas such as Asian American portrayal in American film and television, interracial dating/marriage, socioeconomic factors, and so on. It’s fairly free-formed, and I’ve tried to include as much references as possible. Enjoy.
Asian American portrayal in movies and television
In my original post written 5 years ago, I wrote about how Asians are typecast on American movies and television. The example given at the time was Masi Oka, who played Hiro Nakamura on NBC’s series Heroes [2]. Hiro is short, nerdy, wears glasses, speaks English with an accent, and wields a katana in the TV series. To be fair, the character is Japanese and not “Asian American�. A better example may have been Harold & Kumar, where John Cho (Harold) and Kal Penn (Kumar) are both Asian American characters [3].
Although portrays like Hrio Nakamura are heavily stereotyped, there is a subtle change from what you might have seen decades ago. In Season 2 of Heroes, where Hiro played the role similar to an Asian sidekick to a white male character “Kensei� (an Englishmen in Samurai armor), Hiro was the one who actually gained the girl’s affections (Yaeko).
In the recent AMC TV series “The Walking Dead�, we see the Asian character “Glen� (Steven Yeun) being portrayed as an Asian American and former pizza delivery boy [4]. He is not “foreign�, speaks English fluently without an accent, ended up in a relationship with a pretty white girl Maggie (Lauren Cohan), and it was Maggie who professed her love for him first. When Maggie’s father Hershel referred to Glen as “that Asian boy�, his daughter corrected him with “he has a name, he’s Glen�.
Now, I’m not saying that Asian American men are getting alpha male roles in American film and TV, but things are changing slightly. Asian American actors like Steven Yeun in Walking Dead, or Daniel Dae Kim in Hawaii Five-O [5] no longer have to speak in an accent and act foreign to get roles. Fans of AM/WF fiction might want to check out recent books by Kate Furnivall [6].
On Interracial Marriages
Asian men often complain about Asian women dating outside of their ethnicity. However, recent trends show a small decline in Asian American interracial marriages. In 2008, 30.5% of Asian Americans married interracially, versus 27.7% in 2010. The overall percentage of Asian American women marrying White men has declined, while marriage with other Asian ethnicities (Pan-Asian) has increased. You can compare the statistics between 2006 and 2011 here:
2006: http://www.asian-nation.org/interracial-2006.shtml
2011: http://www.asian-nation.org/interracial.shtml
I’m not going to say the trend is good or bad. Suppose if you’re an Asian American guy who is single and cannot find a GF. Just because 3% more Asian women choose to “play on their own team� doesn’t mean that you’re going to get a GF. I’ll comment on the topic of increasing your sexual market value later. For now, I’ll just say that you shouldn’t read too much into statistics and numbers. For example, there was an article published in 2008 that claimed AM/WF couples are 59% more likely to divorce [8]. Upon closer inspection, we find that their study had a sample size of 1,606 men and 4,070 women with a small % of Asians.
A much larger study published in Feb 2009 with sample size of 23,139 couples (46,278 people) showed that AM/WF and WM/AF divorce rates were roughly equal. Asian/White marriages are more prone to divorce than AM/AF couples, but less likely to divorce than WM/WF couples [9]. What do all these numbers mean to you? Do you see yourself as a person instead of a dot on a chart? Rather than worrying about what percentage of people did what, you should be investing your time and efforts in finding, and improving your relationship with your GF or spouse.
A decline in interracial marriages in the US is not necessarily good or bad, depending on your perspective. From pro-assimilation point of view, it’s normal for immigrants and their children to marry and assimilate into the mainstream. The efforts of Asian parents sending their children to Chinese/Japanese/Korean language weekend schools in US can be described as a losing battle against the tide of eventual assimilation.
However, from a globalization perspective, you could say that the rise of Pan-Asian identify and return of many Asian Americans to Asia for education, employment, and finding their spouse to be part of the regional-globalization trend. Many of my Asian college friends have moved back to Asia for work. Members of my extended family from Taiwan have found themselves posted to Shanghai and Hanoi for work.
The world is a big place, if and when I marry and have children, I’d probably send them to Chinese language school, and take them abroad to visit/live in different Asian cities. Rather than trying to cling to some measure of cultural heritage, I think of it as broaden my children’s opportunities. When they grow up, who’s to say that they’d live and work in the US?
Finally, if you’re an Asian American male looking to hook up with a white girl, the American dating scene can be quite competitive. It’s easier if you can find white girls who are already interested in Asian language, culture, music, film, TV, etc. Alternatively, you can also try going abroad to Europe. When I was in Paris, I observed quite a few local AM/WF couples. The opportunity is there for young Asian American males who are good looking and willing to relocate and learn French. Opportunities also exist in other parts of Europe and the world.
References:
[1] http://www.census.gov/population/www/so ... s2006.html
[2] http://www.nbc.com/heroes/
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_%26_Kumar
[4] http://www.amctv.com/shows/the-walking-dead
[5] http://www.cbs.com/shows/hawaii_five_0/
[6] http://www.katefurnivall.com/
[7] http://news.yahoo.com/interracial-marri ... 51085.html
[8] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 0491.x/pdf
[9] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 582.x/full
If below link has not been posted yet, it's worth the read. Per this study, AM/WF couple has the highest median income.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/02/ ... rmarriage/
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/02/ ... rmarriage/
this is the kind of intellectual write up that might actually help young men out, including losers like philosophical filipino. it's not the same old stereotypes asian males love to use as excuses.
also, you'll want to avoid becoming this type of asian-american:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPEjw-Dw05k&t=2m43s
also, you'll want to avoid becoming this type of asian-american:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPEjw-Dw05k&t=2m43s
I don't see Philosophical Filipino anywhere? What name is he using? I would've recognize him if he was still here using an alias.odbo wrote:this is the kind of intellectual write up that might actually help young men out, including losers like philosophical filipino. it's not the same old stereotypes asian males love to use as excuses.
also, you'll want to avoid becoming this type of asian-american:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPEjw-Dw05k&t=2m43s
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