Book: The Myth of the Model Minority

The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism by Rosalind Chou and Joe Feagin. http://www.paradigm publishers. com/Books/ BookDetail. aspx?productID= 186966 "The authors show how the 'model minority' is a myth, too inaccurate to be useful. They reveal how it reflects invidious assumptions and is abused for political purposes. Anyone who cares about Asian Americans—indeed, who is interested in the dynamics of diversity—should be interested in this detailed critique. Very highly recommended. "—Frank H. Wu, author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White "Through a compelling analysis of white racism experienced by Asian Americans in their everyday lives, Chou and Feagin offer a powerful examination of the psychological and emotional burdens imposed by racism in contemporary society."—Leland T. Saito, University of Southern California "Most Americans believe Asian Americans are content, do not suffer from discrimination, and are all in the path to whiteness. Bravo to the authors for bringing to the fore the racial oppression endured by Asian Americans!"—Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Duke University "This book captures how individual Asian Americans encounter racial hostility and discrimination in a variety of social and institutional spaces, and the distinct ways they strategically respond to such treatment. Some respondents resign themselves to situations while others challenge and actively resist stereotyping, inequitable treatment, and harassment. But as Chou and Feagin convincingly argue, all are both blessed and cursed with the 'double consciousness' shaped by a pervasive 'white racial frame.'"—Michael Omi, University of California–Berkeley "As an often invisible and silent minority, Asian Americans can at last find voice in this brilliant book that recognizes the reality of their experience. The courage, nobility, and honesty of the authors will assist all involved in the struggle for equity and inclusion."—Edna B. Chun, Broward Community College

Inquiry Into Alleged Anti-Asian Bias Expands (from Inside Higher Ed Online)

Check out the conversation about this article online at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/06/11/asians! Some pretty interesting comments toward the bottom... Here's the beginning of the article to wet your appetite! by Scott Jaschik A complaint by an Asian American student that racial bias blocked his admission to Princeton University has been expanded by the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights into a broader “compliance review” of the issues involved beyond his case. The complaint, filed in 2006, has been viewed as significant by critics of affirmative action who argue — as does the rejected applicant — that highly competitive colleges’ commitment to diversity results in differential standards for members of different groups, with Asian American applicants held to tougher standards. Many college officials — most of whom strongly support affirmative action — have dismissed the applicant’s complaint as sour grapes, noting that Princeton each year rejects thousands of well qualified applicants of every racial and ethnic group. The Education Department, responding to an inquiry, acknowledged the shift of the investigation from focusing on one complaint to Princeton’s entire admissions system and its treatment of Asian-American applicants. A department spokesman stressed that converting the investigation did not mean that officials had come to any conclusions about the original complaint. But at the very least, the shift suggests that the government does not view the complaint as frivolous. OCR regularly shuts down complaint investigations, concluding that no violation of the law took place, and the agency has limited resources for compliance reviews. Compliance reviews cover much more ground than any single complaint, tend to take place on issues that the department believes are important, and are sometimes used to nudge other colleges to change policies when they see how one college fared in a review.

The National Scene: An Update by Howard Wang

Dear colleagues, If you have cross membership on other listservs, you may have recieved this already. Please pardon the possibly duplication. Please feel free to forward the links to anyone who may be interested. I was invited to Washington, D.C. and make a presentation to CAPAC (Congressional Asian Pacific Americans Caucus) last week at its first Education Summit to raise issues and share ideas about Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) in education. In conjunction with this Education Summit, the College Board also lauched its first indepth study entitled "Asian American and Pacific Islanders. Facts, not Fiction: Setting the Record Straight." I was also invited to attend its press event on the same day as the Education Summit. In fact, Dr. Robert Teranishi, Principal Investigator with the National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education (or CARE), presented key findings from the College Board report and his presentation can be found in the link provided (http://honda.house.gov/capac/edforum/ see Panel I). The College Board report is one of its kind in re-shaping how education leaders, federal and state policmakers and the public view and understand the complex issues facing AAPI students in the U.S. educational system. This report helps the presenters at the Education Summit to continue the discussion of issues of race, class, ethnicity, culture, English Language Learners, bilingual education, NCLB (No Child Left Behind Act), and the Asian American and Native American Pacific Islanders Serving Institution legislations. Here is the link: http://honda.house.gov/capac/edforum/ to CAPAC's Education Summit, where one can read the abstracts, the presenters' brief biographies, and view the presentations, I am one of the presenters on Panel III. You'll need to have 2007 PowerPoint in order to see my presentation (you'll need to "un-zip" the file first) However, I just found out that Congr. Honda's IT staff has uploaded a pdf file of the presentation and you can simply click on the "Document" link to access and view the slides (do not click on "Presentation" ). You may also directly download the College Board report directly by clicking this link: http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/08-0608-AAPI.pdf without going to the CAPAC link. If you have any questions, or if you are interested in H.R. 4137 (the latest legislation that would allow federal grants for AANAPI Serving Institutions to be used in community partnerships and community outreach activities and programs), please contact me directly. Howard Wang, Ph.D. Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Executive Director, Student Health and Counseling Center California State University, Fullerton P.O. Box 6830 Fullerton, CA 92834-6830 Offc (714) 278-3221; Fax: (714) 278-1188 mailto:hwang@exchange.fullerton.edu

Chronicle Article on Asian Americans

Educational Problems of Asian-Americans May Be Overlooked Because of Stereotypes, Report Says By PETER SCHMIDT The popular image of Asian-Americans as academically successful ignores the tremendous amount of variation among different subsets of that population, according to a report released on Monday by a research collaborative involving the College Board and two institutes at New York University. The collaborative, called the National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education, argues in its report that "there is no such thing" as a composite for all of the ethnic groups that it studies, and figures such as the average SAT scores for that population mask how it is overrepresented at both ends of the achievement spectrum. Read the rest of this article here: http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=PM8qgfphwtbYmyrPJNY93SGjf6swxjdb

Political Hope?

Found this interesting article written by Edward Lee in The Harvard Crimson. Check it out and comment! Overcoming “Impossible” Published On 6/4/2008 12:48:10 AM By EDWARD Y. LEE Before our swim meets, my high school swim coach would often say, “Close your eyes and just imagine.” Imagine crouching low on the starting blocks as you wait for the starting gun. Imagine standing on the winners’ platform with your medal draped around your neck. If it’s possible now in your mind, he’d tell us, it’s possible in the pool. It is our ability to dream that puts the impossible within our reach. Our hopes, our aspirations, our own narratives—they weave like strands into the very fabric of our life stories and our outlook on the future. For me, it is the power of these life stories that drew me to politics. My mother’s selfless sacrifice to provide her two sons with endless opportunities inspired me to service. Recently, Senator Barack Obama’s mission to change the way politics is run encouraged me to become involved in politics for the first time. Moreover, my own experience working on Senator Obama’s campaign showed me that our politics have the potential to inspire and empower rather than divide and discourage. My story begins with my mother’s improbably quest to achieve the American Dream. In 1985, my mother immigrated to the United States from South Korea. She knew very little English and had little money. The accomplishments, the status, the connections that she had back home meant nothing here. The college degree for which she labored so hard in Korea was useless. So, my mother started all over as she held on to a simple conviction—that with determination, she would be able to provide her two sons the opportunities these new shores had to offer. At the age of 29, she enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Washington and worked the evening shift at a retail jewelry store. She came home from school and work every day to take care of her family and to work on her own problem sets and papers. As she juggled her many responsibilities, she never failed to read my brother and me stories before she tucked us into bed. These weren’t simply fairy tales—they weren’t just Dr. Seuss, Disney, or Humpty Dumpty. She also read us biographies—stories about JFK’s hope for a better America, Abraham Lincoln’s vision for a unified nation, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s fight for a nation healed and restored. And each night as I fell asleep listening to the dream of Dr. King, his dream became my own. His vision for the future seeped into my own understanding about what was possible. Just as my mother would go on to receive her Ph.D. and become a professor, she invoked these stories to teach me that with faith and determination, anything is possible. My mother’s example showed me that we must not become complacent with the world as it is, but rather we must envision the world as it should be. During the summer and fall of 2007, I took a leave of absence from college to work for the Obama campaign on the New Hampshire New Media team. As I blogged and edited videos of his daily events, I watched him draw people of all backgrounds. It was their stories that strengthened my faith in Obama’s ability to transform this nation. It was the wife of a war veteran who held signs at rallies so that no other solder would share her husband’s fate. It was the cancer patient who made phone calls to make sure that all Americans had affordable health care. It was the senior citizen who canvassed for hours in the pouring rain to ensure that his grandchildren would have a better future. Through them, I found that the things that bind us are greater than what divides us. Senator Obama is a leader who unifies this country around its common values. He is a visionary who will lead and reshape the nation rather than simply mend it. His candidacy is our chance to restore this simple dream for generations to come and imagine a better tomorrow. We imagine a future where our bold young men and women are no longer shipped overseas to fight a war that should never have been waged. We imagine a future in which senior citizens no longer have to cut pills and forgo medicine in order to afford their healthcare. We imagine a future in which we can save our planet and end our dependence on foreign oil. We imagine a future in which we can reclaim the American Dream for all people, of all religions, of all economic status, of all sexual orientations and all racial identities. Ultimately, Obama inspires us to realize that these desirable ends can only be accomplished if we come together as one nation. As graduates walk across the stage this week to commemorate their time at Harvard, they turn the page of their own life stories. They imagine the endless opportunities to change the world and write the next great chapter of American history. Society is sure to meet these hopes with cynicism. Pundits are sure to embrace a politics of “No you can’t.” They will surely posit that such dreams are naïve and irrational. But that’s what hope is for. The same hope that led my mother to cross an ocean to start all over. The same hope that millions of Americans continue to believe in as they imagine a brighter future. The same hope that Senator Obama has to offer all Americans. This is the hope that we as graduates must hold strong to. It is the ingredient that has brought us this far. And it is the fuel that moves us closer to the impossible. Close your eyes and just imagine; because if it is possible now in your minds, it is possible out there. Edward Y. Lee ’08-’09 is a government concentrator in Kirkland House. He is a member of Harvard Students for Obama. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=523800

Here Comes the BLOG!

Goals of the Blog:

Career / Job Posting : A venue for colleagues to inform others of jobs that are open that their institutions.

Current Events: A space to discuss current trends affecting our community, this could be things that are positive that celebrate us in Higher Ed and beyond or things that negatively impact the community.

Article/Research Facilitation: This is a space where individuals could share articles they’ve read/reviewed, individuals could talk about different research projects they are working on, ask for assistance or partners for presentations/research

So how will this work??

We want this to be pretty open so the blog allows anyone to really post, it just requires you to register.

Currently there are 6 people designated as Authors so if you don’t want to register but would like to post something you can also send your message to one of these folks to post for you. Feel free to send posts to Sara Furr (furr@msmary.edu) Bernie Liang (bhliang@u.washington.edu) Windi Sasaki (ws76@cornell.edu) if you would like something posted but don’t want to register (this list can grow if other folks are willing to serve as posters for others, I didn’t want to sign anyone up who wasn’t prepared)

Pretty much anyone can comment to already existing posts and it keeps the entire discussion thread together.

Please let me know if you have any questions, forward this widely and Happy Blogging!!