I have been told by many that I need to acknowledge my privilege as an Asian American as if I were born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Their reasoning is usually that Asian Americans are successful because they immigrated to the U.S late and are already rich and educated. I don’t buy it. Even among people in poverty, Asian Americans will succeed at at a higher rate than any other group. I don’t think it’s because white people “like” us either, but I would like to know your opinions.
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I have been told by many that I need to acknowledge my privilege as an Asian American as if I were born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Their reasoning is usually that Asian Americans are successful because they immigrated to the U.S late and are already rich and educated. I don’t buy it. Even among people in poverty, Asian Americans will succeed at at a higher rate than any other group. I don’t think it’s because white people “like” us either, but I would like to know your opinions.
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Specifically because they are Asian? Less so than white people more so than most/all other races.
That being said, I think other privileges are correlated with being Asian in America even if it’s not a causal relationship.
I suppose if being more controlled by parents is a “privilege”.
Generally, most that immigrate here come from wealth or education back in Asia. So they generally carry the privilege of wealth rather than race.
>Do yall think that Asian Americans are privileged? If so, why?
No.
>I have been told by many that I need to acknowledge my privilege as an Asian American as if I were born with a silver spoon in my mouth.
You need better company.
>Their reasoning is usually that Asian Americans are successful because they immigrated to the U.S late and are already rich and educated.
You need better company.
From my observation of Asian culture, there’s a heavy focus on education and working hard to achieve your dreams. And I mean genuinely holding those beliefs, not the bs we have the USA where people actually just wants to be selfish and do as little as possible to get as much as possible.
Other cultures actually value hard work and education. Americans, in general, don’t, as much as people spout it. Something tells me those people you were around, just can’t accept the fact that a foreigner is more in line with our supposed “values”, than actual natives of the country.
TLDR: You met some jealous people. Do your best to avoid them.
Privilege is not a binary yes/no. Asian Americans face their own unique set of challenges and stereotypes both positive and negative.
Asian Americans are also not a monolith. The experience of an immigrant coming from India or China for graduate studies is not the same as the experience of a Vietnamese refugee. And those effects are felt in the younger generations that come afterwards too.
No matter how much we try to prevent it, people will always stereotype other races based on their race. It just so happens that the stereotypes for Asians tend to benefit them in certain settings (I.e. job market). However the stereotypes can be harmful in other contexts.
You have three things going on.
These are broad strokes, and I am not talking about your grandma or whoever’s situation when they immigrated to the US under whatever circumstances for better or worse. I don’t know their stories, and I’m not speaking for them. How could I?
However…
1 – White supremacy is a process of creating in-groups and out-groups and enforcing that separation. That separation sometimes requires more force than the minority in-group can self manage. Solution? Allow a moderate amount of power to a selected out-group. This selected out-group has no real power outside of being useful to the in-group. See the model minority system as an example. You see this across history in colonization across the globe. It’s a tried and true tool.
2 – Specifically relevant to American white supremacists. There was a time when it was more valuable to the white in-group to use Asian Americans as the selected out-group. Again, this is not to the direct benefit of Asian Americans as much as it is keeping other groups out of the direct chain of ownership and financial systems. This is your stereotypical Asian Corner stores in black neighborhoods.
Again, I’m not talking about anyone specific or what horrible shit they faced as a small business owner. But it’s not beyond the pale to acknowledge racists fuckers in banking and land development would rather use Asian communities as a buffer than loan money to black people in several US cities.
3 – I’m not arguing what racial stereotypes are … better or worse. It’s all a shit sandwich being forced onto communities by a white owning in-group… and it doesn’t even make any fucking sense given how wide and flimsy these racial labels are (i.e Asians are apparently everyone from India, Korea to Indonesia through the Phillips and into the some if the Pacific Islander communities… which doesn’t make any sense. As well as black being, everything melanine related to the entire continent of Africa through the Caribbean and sometimes South American…).
Anyway, the labels shittily applied across groups can sometimes have … things that make police more scared. I.E. the super predators’ mythos around black children. Make of that what you will. But there is a difference in how the enforcement arm of the country treats people of color across multiple communities.
Then you have the whole … Asian Americans vs Asian immigrants and how the modern US immigration system heavily favors people with money… that’s a whole other conversation into itself.
As much as this country loves its “I’m not privileged! I worked hard for this, it can happen to you” narrative, it’s weird that asians having money wouldn’t qualify
Please read more. Privilege doesn’t equate to being born to a rich family and there are certain privileges afforded to different people.
There is an Asian undergraduate student in my lab who did research in highschool because there was an Asian PI whom their family knew. A position I would gather would not have happened if it wasn’t for privilege. Now that doesn’t negate the hard work he is doing now in research but he should be mindful of his start.
Asian Americans have their own shit to deal with. Stereotypes either have to be lived up to or else lived down.
Westernized Asians resemble Jews to me; their industriousness and dominance in academia makes them fair mightier than their numbers suggest.
Some trash Asians as the other white people because they blow the theories of why minorities don’t have their own money.
Have you actually been told this in real life? Or have you been spending too much time in political online spaces with people that obsess over race?
The trope of the “good immigrant” is a particularly toxic one, and is often applied to Asians who come here for higher education and/or work hard. Many try to assimilate, for example, by changing their names. Because they’ve worked hard, achieved success in tech, small business, or other skilled ventures, they have some social status and acceptance…on the surface.
Still, they are not considered White, and suffer countless micro aggressions. Some think they are safe due to wealth or White proximity (especially Silicon Valley tech bros. Although Asians across the U.S. who work in tech only make up 17% of all workers, in Silicon Valley, 57% of tech workers are Asian – if you include Indians as Asian.)
Asians are just as vulnerable as any other minority to discrimination, it’s just that, in some areas, it not recognized because there are Asians scattered in top positions (Look! Google has an Indian CEO!) or it’s more subtly disguised.
Full disclosure, I’m white, but my husband is Indian (naturalized citizen since 2006.) He, like a shocking number of Asians who have found success, is conservative. (He didn’t vote. He knew voting for Trump would not be good for our marriage, and he’s definitely not MAGA. Still won’t admit how bad it is, though.) I also lived in the Bay Area for a long time. I saw how Asians and Mexicans lived side by side, but were treated differently by White folks (they did okay with each other for the most part, unless they were in gangs.)
Everyone has some type of privilege, and almost everyone benefits from looking at their own privilege, both to keep themselves humble and to try and figure how they might use it to help others (or help themselves, I suppose).
I’m not Asian American though, so I’m not going to comment on what sort of privilege they may or may not have.
I will say, however, that Asia is a big place, and I would not expect people that come from Pakistan or Japan or Mongolia to all have the same types of privilege (or lack thereof).
You might be dealing with the model minority myth.
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/30/1101790205/as-an-asian-american-youre-called-a-model-minority-until-they-decide-you-arent
Only the privileged ones
No. This is the type of thing that makes liberals look stupid.
Also, “asian” is a pretty stupid descriptor.
High caste indians with physician parents? Probably privileged in most areas of life. But still not completely accepted in the highest strata. We’re seeing it now: some think because they’re rich, they have a white card to play. so, we see complete assholes like vivek ramaswamy thinking the racists in the gop will embrace him if he’s as racist as they are.
East asians have been here long enough that their super-genius original ancestors are grandparents, now. After 3 generations, they revert to the mean and their kids are less likely to have the galaxy brains of their grandparents.
But there’s wide discrimination against asian people all throughout American society.
If you see an east asian ceo, it’s likely that they founded the company, despite being over-represented in every feeder occupation for the c-suite.
The discrimination against asian people by universities hastened the end of dei and affirmative action. There was truly no rational way to defend that. Progressives embarrassed themselves by punishing achievement.
Based on observation, asian young men have fewer dating opportunities than i had in the 80s and 90s.
There’s a long way to go for asian people in American society. Yes, they are prosperous. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t discriminated against. And as others have pointed out, there are groups of asians who are not particularly prosperous.
And success comes at a price. Asian kids from immigrant families face intense pressure to excel, academically. Purely anecdotally, not all of them thrive from a mental-health standpoint. No idea how many generations it takes to stop treating your kids like they are inmates in a study prison.
Otoh, some of those immigrant parents push their kids academically because they see it as a hedge against the discrimination their kids are gonna face. So they’re not totally wrong.
No. No one is “privileged” but the wealthy.
My understanding of privilege is that every single group has some sort of privilege. And understanding your own set of privileges is there to guide you in understanding how other people make decisions and the choices (or lack thereof) available to them lead to certain outcomes, good or bad. In my opinion privilege gets overused by non academic types to use as a bludgeoning tool to silence debate and as such has distorted its meaning. It’s a tool of self reflection, and is for you to use for yourself. Not to analyze others privileges and use that to dismiss their thoughts.
Only the ones that are privileged, I guess? They’re not immune to privilege.
Being allowed to move to a country that’s already wealthy and gives you the conditions to prosper is a privilege for anyone.
Recent immigrants get to thrive based on the sacrifices and efforts of earlier generations.
Pretty stupid and pointless generalisation. I definitely am a very well off and privileged Asian American, but plenty others aren’t.
What?
> Even among people in poverty, Asian Americans will succeed at at a higher rate than any other group.
I haven’t studied the statistics myself but I have read that there are huge differences in different groups of asians in America. For example I have read that Hmong Americans have pretty low rates of education and high rates of things like unwed motherhood.
> Their reasoning is usually that Asian Americans are successful because they immigrated to the U.S late and are already rich and educated.
In my experience there is a certain amount of truth to that for recent immigrants and their children. Many people come to America for college and stay, which means they were smart enough to get in and/or their family was rich enough to pay the high rates that colleges often charge for foreign students. Thus the children are usually set up with good genes and money. Toss in the fact that asian countries usually have higher savings rates and the kids often come from families with a lot of money left over after paying for college.
But there is also the culture of studying and focus on academics. Most white Americans would be shocked at how much studying kids with asian parents are forced to do and many would sharply criticize it.
> I don’t think it’s because white people “like” us either, but I would like to know your opinions.
I have seen a tiny bit, mostly it’s been from white women. I can only think of one instance where a white man was involved.
Honestly I think I’ve heard more racist comments from asians against both blacks and whites, but they have all been immigrants so they didn’t grow up with American condemnations of racism.
But I generally don’t hang out with racists and people who are around me generally wouldn’t express any racism because I wouldn’t approve.
There tends to be an association with Asians and economic privilege because statistically, Asian Americans tend to do better than every other race. That said, without actual financial privilege, that’s not really a factor so unless somebody was addressing it, it’s not really fair. Plenty of Asian folks in the United States grew up poor.
I would also say that if a darker skinned person was talking about privilege, it might be worth chewing on. I think that light skinned Asian Americans tend to be seen as “more whites, which is a negative for sure, but do not face the same level of discrimination and abuse as darker skin folks. There’s no binary and privilege as some other people have fed, so while there might be elements of privilege for a light skinned or wealthy Asian American, that doesn’t necessarily negate the struggles that you face in a different place as well.
That isn’t how privilege works. Every person experiences both privilege and oppression. It is a status not a characteristic.