[quote=fat_lazy_union_worker]
There is no short term fix. As i said, it’s gonna have to take a systematic shorting that would get asians to bind together the plight of any one particular race. For one, older generation still have some of those views that divide people. For example, some of the Chinese and Koreans still have bias against Japanese, some don’t consider filipinos and vietnamese to be asian, etc,etc,etc. The list of why asians don’t work together go on and on and on and on. Second, asians tend to not question authority. “Don’t rock the boat.”… [/quote]
Funny that you said Chinese don’t consider Vietnamese as Asian, because Chinese have been trying to take over Vietnam for 4000 years. When communist too over China, guess where a lot of Chinese ran to… hint hint, Vietnam.
[quote=fat_lazy_union_worker]Culturally and socially, this is a big problem. Because this just means a lot more asians are willing to put up with a lot more sh!t that other people wouldn’t normally do. I’ve seen so many times in professions more than qualified asians pass up for promotions and managed by complete incompetent idiots. Why? Because they don’t speak up. Yeah, among themselves, they bitch about how they never get promotion XYZ, or why is someone QQQ being promoted when all he/she is just talk talk talk? Well, that’s exactly the problem with most of socialized corporation. Sometimes it’s far more important to be able to talk talk talk, than to be able to actually execute. It’s how it works in corp america. A bunch of so so engineers usually depends on a handful of great engineers to do the real work, but bonuses are usually given out evenly across the board or worse more so to the one that can talk about what everyone else did without actually doing it. Shitty? Yes? Fair, hell no. Socialism, absolutely. What to do about it. Asians need to learn a think or two about playing politics and being self-promoting one’s contributions. And yes, that means, switching jobs ever 3-4 years and giving an employer the middle finger ever so often and let the project fail if you were doing most of the work and were getting 0.04% credit for it.
Longer term, asians need to diversify into other things besides just your typical engineering or medical or wall street profession. We need people to get into politics, we need more people to practice law. Not just about patent law, or corporate law. you know, things that can really make a difference, immigration, civil liberties,etc.
And this is where the asian community can actually throw money at the problem. There are plenty of asian kids that contrary to belief aren’t from wealthy families, that are shut out just like everyone other family that can’t afford to send their kid to some of the best legal professions. Of if their parents can, are told pick a “safe” profession and do it in engineering or medicine. We need to get scholarships going for those kids interested in government, legal professions that can’t afford it, because the rest of america pretty much have shut them out. These asian kids can battle the inequity of quotas and admissions discrimination, they can’t handle lack of funding…That’s where some of these tech CEOs from taiwan, china, japan, vietnam,etc need to step up and help.
One of my neighbors is CEO of a large chinese communications company. He was talking to me the other month, telling me he is sending is two boys back home to China. Why? Because he says, they won’t succeed as much here in the U.S. being both asian and male. When I asked him about this, he basically vented his frustration over politicians again the entire “liberal” but not inclusive, though he also thinks (and i agree) this Bush administration are complete morons. When i asked him, why is that? He says because there isn’t enough representation in our government to help balance some of this inequity. Fine, i said, have you explained this to your boys, and are they going to pursue careers in politics or law, or is all that matters how much money they make? That’s where sort of the light bulb went on. So, there are some work going on to setup some scholarships in your not-so-typical asian professions (sorry, no scholarships in under water basket weaving)… If we’re still living in this country when my daughter is older, I am hoping i can convince her to get more involved in a legal/politics, rather than pursue the cookie cutter engineering and medical profession. Too many damn soft spoken enginerds and doctors. I’ll have the financial backing in for her to do this.
As far as contributing to this country. As an asian american, you have a personal responsibility to keep this economy going. And that means sort of means doing your part and spend, doing your part to buy things that support american businesses (the entire buy american mantra, that surprisingly so many americans don’t given a shit about)and when possible providing jobs to people that depend on jobs.
You’re useless if all you are doing is your 9-5 job W-2. You’re not providing anything to anyone else beyond bringing in that paycheck to payoff your own bills. If some idiot in Washington pushes the red panic button, they’ll cart your ass off that W-2 and find j6p to replace you, and you won’t be missed. On the other hand, you take a CEO, or a business owner that provides employment for 600, 1000, 2000 employees, and you wrongfully cart his/her ass to a concentration camp, I guarentee, you’ll have 600,1000,2000 pissed off unemployed employees, unless of course you were an asshole CEO or conman like some of these CEO crooks we see these days, in which case, 600,1000,2000 people would gladly see your ass in jail. That’s why even if you are making your “top 5% AGI income” on a W2, you might want to reconsider your strategy, even though it’s nice to collect that W2. Sometimes, getting spoon fed a W2 makes us weaker when it comes to social issues. In not just about affording that bigger house in Carmel Valley, or that new bimmer. This is a much bigger problem. Not saying you have to give that up, but you just need to balance this out with everything else. My favorite question i like to ask asian communities: when was the last time you made a campaign contribution? When was the last time you volunteered and/or donated time/effort to a social cause. When was the last time you spoke out against some inequity?
This might seem a little unfair. Why should we have to do more to prove a point? Agreed. Why should an asian kid have to work harder to squeeze into a quota limiting engineering degree? It is what it is.
It just needs to be done. Run chink run.
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I agree with a lot of what you say here regarding diversification in profession. I think that is happening now that you have 2nd and 3rd generation Asian American growing up here. One example I can come up with is Orange County. There are a lot of Vietnamese who live there. They are very vocal and they participate in all level of government. That basically answer your question regarding Asian participation in social causes. Asians do tend to stick together and support each other. At least within the sub Asian groups. Now, if we can all just become Asian American, instead of Chinese American, Vietnamese American, etc, our voice would be much louder. Regarding speaking out against inequality, I think our tolerance for inequality is much higher than most. That’s partly due to the way we were raised. Because of this higher threshold, a lot of inequity that African American would scream from the roof top about, we probably didn’t even notice it until someone point it out to us.
I think the reason we go into Engineering and Health care is because our parents pushed us to go into that direction. But I think after growing up here, 2nd gen AA do not have the same ideal about profession their kids should go into. Just having the parents approval in anything they do would open a lot of doors.
Regarding your comment about W-2, I do share the same dire view. After all, you need W-2er to work for those CEO. If everyone become CEO, who would work for them? See my point? If it gets as bad you think, there’s always Canada :-). I know many who run their own business and I commend them for doing what they like, but I’m happy with my W-2 life so far.
