LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES: Eight-year-old David Luu helps his mother Hui Zhang, a Cantonese speaker, read and complete her ballot at a polling center set up inside a community center in Chinatown in Los Angeles, California, 02 March 2004. (Photo credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images via Flickr @booknews)
One week after the 2018 Midterm Elections and with mail-in and provisional ballots finally being counted, pollsters are now realizing the true size of this year’s so-called “blue wave”: riding a surge of votes for Democratic candidates, the Democratic party now appears poised to pick up 35 to 40 seats in the House, and may have lost only 1 or 2 seats in the Senate. An American Decisions exit poll of Black, Latinx, and Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters further demonstrates how influential voters of color were in fueling that “blue wave”.
Justin Kim, the first Asian American male model on America’s Next Top Model. (Photo credit: Matthew Vita)
A study being conducted by a doctoral student of Counseling Psychology at Indiana University under the training of Dr. Joel Wong is recruiting survey respondents to better understand how gendered racism might uniquely affect Asian American men. The student running the study — Tao Liu — has asked that I help publicize this work on the blog, in hopes of reaching out to a broad range of study participants.
This study offers a necessary opportunity to explore and understand the complex self-identity of Asian American men. As such, I strongly encourage any readers who think they fit the demographics of the study’s desired recruits to participate.
Please see the full recruiting notice after the jump.
Asian American supporters of affirmative action at a recent rally. (Photo credit: OCA)
I was having dinner earlier this week with a member of my extended family when the topic of race-conscious affirmative action and SCA-5 came up. My family member (who is not Asian American) was surprised to learn that I support affirmative action; he was under the impression that all Asian Americans were monolithically opposed to race-conscious admissions considerations. “What?” he asked, somewhat teasingly, “don’t you want Asians to be able to get into college?”
All this aside, there is a persistent myth within the American political landscape that Asian Americans are universally opposed to affirmative action. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the affirmative action issue is one that highlights the diversity in Asian American political thought.
Consequently, several mainstream media outlets have reported on the stark racial divide between Black and White Americans on Ferguson and whether or not racism is a problem in America; nearly half surveyed White Americans think Brown’s shooting death is being overracialized. While two-thirds of Black Americans think excessive force by police is a problem, only one-third of White Americans agree. This clear chasm between Black and White attitudes on race and police effectiveness is both well-documented and not altogether surprising: these answers are heavily influenced by one’s own personal experiences with racism and police brutality, and both economic and skin privilege often protects Whites from unjust run-ins with local police.
But where do Asian Americans — who are both people of colour yet who endure a completely different set of racial stereotypes in America than do other minorities — fall on questions of police brutality?
