Brilliant Asians in image crisis More peace
ASIAN American families churn out doctors, engineers and graduate students, but their high-achieving image hides a “bamboo ceiling” that marginalises the fastest growing US minority, experts say.
Jonathan Saw, Asia Society’s senior adviser for Asian Paci c American Research, said on Monday that a new survey demonstrates an odd mixture of success and disenchantment, with 83 per cent of Asian Americans feeling loyal to their company but only 49 per cent feeling they belong.
“Asian Americans don’t really see themselves as belonging to corporate America, even though they are very successful,” he said.
The reason is that while Asian Americans tend to start strongly, graduating from prestigious schools and quickly winning good jobs, they later hit the so-called “bamboo ceiling.”
“You don’t see a lot of Asian Americans in senior leadership positions,” Saw said. The problem, according to Saw and others at an Asia Society conference in New York, is deeply ingrained bias within wider US society against treating Asians like other Americans.
“There’s this notion of Asian Americans as the perpetual ‘other,’” Saw said.
“Asian Americans are always seen as great doers, which is great, but it only gets you to middle management. At that critical juncture between middle manager and senior management, where relationships matter more than what you do, those perceptions matter.”
Plenty of racial and ethnic groups in the United States — most obviously African Americans — have suffered because of prejudice.
But what makes Asian Americans’ problem unique is that they are trapped in the cliche of having to be clever — clever to the point of being nerdy, out of touch, and un- able to represent mainstream American life.
That’s why the outbreak earlier this year of “Linsanity” — the media hysteria over Asian American basketball player Jeremy Lin leading the Knicks to a string of victories — was a landmark moment, said Saul Gitlin, with Kang & Lee Advertising.
Here was yet another Asian American who started on the expected track of studying at Harvard University but, in a rare twist, emerged as a charismatic sports hero rather than an anonymous doctor or programmer.
“It’s a turning point of what happens when you go against the stereotype,” Gitlin said, identifying Lin as a beacon for young Asians who have “suffered at the hands of this stereotype of being the smart guy, the geek, the tech guy.”
However, actor Sendhil Ramamurthy, who was also once on track to become a doctor, told the conference that typecasting in TV and studio lms is as strong as ever.
“Asians play certain characters,” he said. “They play the doctor, or they play the smart guy. That’s very much still the case. I don’t know what it takes to change that, otherwise I’d be doing it.”
Experts say change may eventually come, as it often does in the United States, through market forces — namely the fact that the 17.3 million-strong Asian American population is shooting up and growing rich.
“Asian Americans are the fastest-growing multicultural segment in the US,” Thomas Tseng, co-founder of New American Dimensions, said.
Although the Hispanic market is three times bigger and “tends to get most of the attention,” the Asian sector is wealthier and higher tech.
Eighty-seven per cent go online every day, compared to 73 per cent of the general population, and laptop ownership is 74 per cent versus 52 per cent, Pew survey gures show.
DESPITE an escalating con ict in Syria and mounting civil unrest in Europe, the world became a more peaceful place in the last year, a study showed yesterday, highlighting particular improvement in Africa. The Global Peace Index, produced by the Australia and US-based Institute for Economics and Peace, showed its rst improvement in two years. For the rst time, sub-Saharan Africa was no longer the world’s least peaceful region, losing that dubious distinction to the Middle East and North Africa in the aftermath of the “Arab Spring”.
The survey studied 23 indicators across 158 countries, ranging from measures of civil unrest and crime to military spending, involvement in armed con ict and relations with neighbours. Aside from the deterioration in the Middle East, every other region in the world showed at least some form of improvement.
Overall, survey founder Steve Killelea — an Australian entrepreneur who made the initial index six years ago — said there appeared to be several key drivers. Overall, global military spending looked to be beginning to fall — in part a consequence of the global nancial crisis — while relations between countries were broadly improving, with leaders increasingly turning to diplomacy not violence.
“The improvement in relation with the states and a greater reluctance to resort to war is very profound, particularly in Africa,” he said in an interview in London. “You’ve seen a very signi cant reduction in con ict ... When I rst went to Uganda 15 years or so ago, for example, they were ghting four wars. Now they are ghting none.”
The sharpest deterioration in peace, the report showed, took place in Syria, with several other countries in the region falling down the list.
Last year’s report showed violence linked to the “Arab Spring” had made the world a less peaceful place, while the 2010 study showed economic hardship driving up global unrest. Those two years undid three years of improvements, with the level of global peace in 2012 now almost exactly that of six years earlier, Killelea said.