scholarly journals The Time All San Francisco Fought Over School Fairness and Equality

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Teddy Yee Fang
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
White Students ◽  
Chinese American ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Admission Policies ◽  
Activist Groups

Asian Americans have become a major factor in the debate over affirmative action and college/school admission policies. Yet most often their role is relegated to one side or the other of the argument - either grouped with other oppressed minorities, or else grouped with privileged white students. However, Asian Americans have their own agency and self-determination that requires attention. Beginning in the 1990s, San Francisco’s Asian American community resisted mainstream hegemony and charted their own course forward.  This study uses a comparative approach towards these early Asian American activists, comparing and contrasting their motivations and actions with Black activists of the time, and also with a respected federal judge, scion of one of San Francisco’s wealthiest and traditional legal dynasties. News articles, notes and newsletters of Chinese American activist groups, internal school district reports, and 24 interviews are used to express how early generations of Asian Americans stood up to fight when they felt their version of the American dream was under attack, and how they focused on present-day tactical actions instead of future-looking strategies or past historical experiences. This study also reveals practical principles that these specifically Chinese American activists employed which may have applications for all groups resisting domination and/or assimilation. The methods and tactics employed by these second-generation Asian Americans that grew up in a community remade by the 1965 Immigration Act, helps us understand how the Asian American community has developed since then, and how it is continuing to move forward.  

Choosing to be the Hero, the Joker, the Villain: An Interview with Arthur Dong

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 41-46
Author(s):  
Oliver Wang
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Short Film ◽  
Recent Experience ◽  
West Hollywood

Oliver Wang interviews documentary filmmaker Arthur Dong. Originally from San Francisco, Dong began his career as a student filmmaker in the 1970s before releasing the Oscar-nominated short film, Sewing Woman in 1982. Since then, his films have focused on the role of Chinese and Asian Americans in entertainment industries as well as on anti-LGBQ discrimination. In the interview, Wang and Dong discuss Dong's beginnings as a high school filmmaker, his decision to turn the story of his seamstress mother into Sewing Woman, his struggle to bring together the Asian American and queer film communities and his recent experience in staging a “Hollywood Chinese” exhibit inside a renovated bar in West Hollywood.

Social Distance Evaluations in White and African-American Students

1995 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 478-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Lee Hoxter ◽  
David Lester
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
African American ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
White Students ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
African American Students ◽  
The Other ◽  
African American Adults ◽  
American Students

Among 241 college students, both white and African-American adults were less willing to be personal friends with people of the other ethnic group than with people of their own ethnic group. African-American students were also less willing to be friends with Asian Americans than were white students.

The Mean is Not Enough: Using Quantile Regression to Examine Trends in Asian–White Differences Across the Entire Achievement Distribution

2009 ◽  
Vol 111 (5) ◽  
pp. 1274-1295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spyros Konstantopoulos
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Achievement Gap ◽  
Quantile Regression ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
White Students ◽  
Model Minority ◽  
High Achievers

Background In recent years, Asian Americans have been consistently described as a model minority. The high levels of educational achievement and educational attainment are the main determinants for identifying Asian Americans as a model minority. Nonetheless, only a few studies have examined empirically the accomplishments of Asian Americans, and even fewer studies have compared their achievement with other important societal groups such as Whites. In addition, differences in academic achievement between Asian Americans and Whites across the entire achievement distribution, or differences in the variability of the achievement distribution, have not been documented. However, this is an important task because it provides information about the achievement gap for lower, average, and higher achieving students. Purpose The present study examines differences in academic achievement between Asian American and White students in average scores (e.g., middle of the achievement distribution), in extreme scores (e.g., the upper and the lower tails of the achievement distribution), and in the variability of the achievement distribution. The main objective of this study is to determine the achievement gap between Asian American and White students in the lower and upper tails of the achievement distribution to shed some light on whether the achievement gap between the two groups varies by achievement level. Participants I use data from four national probability samples of high school seniors to examine Asian American–White differences in achievement from 1972 to 1992. Specifically, I used data from the base year of the NLS (NLS:72), the base year of the High School and Beyond (HSB) survey of 1980, the first follow-up of the HSB survey in 1982 (that is HSB:80, HSB:82), and the second follow-up of NELS (NELS:92). Research Design The study is correlational and uses quantile regression to analyze observational data from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Findings The findings indicate that the Asian American–White gap is more pronounced in mathematics than in reading. In 1992, the gap in the middle and the upper tail of the mathematics distribution is greater than one third of a SD, which is not a trivial gap in education. In reading, the gap is overall smaller, and nearly one third of a SD in 1992 in the upper tail (favoring Asian students). Conclusions It appears that Asian American students are indeed a model minority group that performs not only at similar levels but also at higher levels than the majority group, especially among high achievers in mathematics (and reading in the 1990s).

Asian and Asian American Suburbs in the United States

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Zarsadiaz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Southern California ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Bay Area

Asians and Asian Americans are the most suburbanized people of color in the United States. While Asians and Asian Americans have been moving to the metropolitan fringe since the 1940s, their settlement accelerated in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. This was partly the result of relaxed US immigration policies following the 1965 Hart-Celler Act. Globalization and burgeoning transnational economies across the so-called Pacific Rim also encouraged outmigration. Whether it is Korean or Indian immigrants in northern New Jersey or Vietnamese refugees in suburban Houston, Asians and Asian Americans have shifted Americans’ understandings of “typical” suburbia. In the late 1980s, academic researchers and policymakers started paying closer attention to this phenomenon, especially in Southern California, where Asians and Asian Americans often clustered together in select suburbs. Sociologists, in particular, observed how greater Los Angeles’s economic, political, and built landscapes changed as immigrants and refugees—predominantly from Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea, India, and Vietnam—established roots throughout the region, including Orange County. Since then, other studies of heavily populated Asian and Asian American ethnic suburbs—or “ethnoburbs”—have emerged, including research on New York City, Boston, and Washington, DC. Nonetheless, scholarship remains focused on Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, and other hubs of the metropolitan West Coast. Research and scholarship on Asians and Asian Americans living in the suburbs has grown over the last decade. This is partly a response to demographic shifts occurring beyond the coasts. Moreover, geographers, historians, and urban planners have joined the discussion, producing critical studies on race, class, architecture, and political economy. Despite the breadth and depth of recent research, literature on Asian and Asian American suburbanization remains limited. There is thus much room for additional research on this subject, given a majority of Asians and Asian Americans in the United States live outside city limits.

Asian Americans in Opera: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Yunhwa Rao
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese Opera ◽  
American Composers ◽  
History Of

Chinese opera in America has several intertwined histories that have developed from the mid-19th century onward to inform performances and representations of Asian Americans on the opera stage. These histories include Chinese opera theater in North America from 1852 to 1940, Chinese opera performance in the ubiquitous Chinese villages at various World Fairs in the United States from 1890 to 1915, the famous US tour of Peking opera singer Mei Lanfang from New York to Chicago and San Francisco in 1930, a constellation of imagined “Chinese” opera and yellowface plays from 1880 to 1930, and the more recent history of contemporary opera created by Asian Americans commissioned by major opera houses. Some of these varied histories are closely intertwined, not all are well understood, and some have been simply forgotten. Since the mid-19th century, Chinese opera theater has become part of US urban history and has left a significant imprint on the collective cultural and historical memory of Chinese America. Outside of Chinese American communities arose well-known instances of imagined “Chinese” opera, yellowface works that employ the “Chinese opera trope” as a source of inspiration, or Western-style theatrical works based on Chinese themes or plotlines. These histories are interrelated, and have also significantly shaped the reception and understanding of contemporary operas created by Asian American composers and writers. While these operatic works of the late 20th and early 21st centuries are significantly different from those of earlier moments in history, their production and interpretation cannot escape this influence.

The Effects of Being Born in the United States on the Job Satisfaction of Asian Americans

2000 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 347-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles N. Weaver
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Job Satisfaction ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
European American ◽  
Full Time ◽  
European Americans ◽  
The U.S

Analysis of the responses of Asian American ( n = 178), African American ( n = 1,026), and European American ( n = 8,118) full-time workers to 21 nationwide surveys representative of the U.S. labor force from 1972 through 1996 showed the job satisfaction of Asian Americans compared to that of the other two groups was affected by whether subjects were born in the United States. In addition, there were no gender differences in job satisfaction among African Americans and European Americans who were and were not born in the U.S., but there were such differences among Asian Americans.

Backtalk

2017 ◽  
Vol 98 (5) ◽  
pp. 80-80
Author(s):  
Todd L. Pittinsky
Keyword(s):  
Achievement Gap ◽  
Asian American ◽  
White Students ◽  
Family Income ◽  
Hispanic Students ◽  
Educational Achievement ◽  
The Other ◽  
Or Education ◽  
Asian American Students ◽  
American Students

Educators tend to be familiar with an educational achievement gap between black and Hispanic students on one hand and white students on the other, a gap that seems to be tied up with relative rates of poverty. But there is also a fairly startling — and growing — achievement gap between white students and Asian-American students, and it can’t be chalked up to family income or education.

scholarly journals Chinatown Black Tigers: Black Masculinity and Chinese Heroism in Frank Chin's Gunga Din Highway

2003 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-86
Author(s):  
Crystal S. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Chinese American ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
Ishmael Reed ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Frank Chin ◽  
Asian American Men ◽  
Traditional Masculinity

Images of ominous villains and asexual heroes in literature and mainstream American culture tend to relegate Asian American men to limited expressions of masculinity. These emasculating images deny Asian American men elements of traditional masculinity, including agency and strength. Many recognize the efforts of Frank Chin, a Chinese American novelist, to confront, expose, and revise such images by relying on a tradition of Chinese heroism. In Gunga Din Highway (1994), however, Chin creates an Asian American masculinity based on elements of both the Chinese heroic tradition and a distinct brand of African American masculinity manifested in the work of Ishmael Reed, an African American novelist and essayist known for his outspoken style. Rather than transforming traditional masculinity to include Asian American manhood, Chin's images of men represent an appropriation of elements from two ethnic sources that Chin uses to underscore those of Asian Americans. While deconstructing the reductive images advocated by the dominant culture, Chin critiques the very black masculinity he adopts. Ultimately he fails to envision modes of masculinity not based on dominance, yet Chin's approach also can be read as the ultimate expression of Asian American individualism.

Comedy, Humor, and Asian American Representation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Kyungah Hong
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Culturally Different ◽  
The One ◽  
The 19Th Century

Asian Americans have had and continue to have a complicated relationship with comedy and humor. On the one hand, comedy and humor have always been a vital and dynamic part of Asian American culture and history, even if they have rarely been discussed as such. On the other hand, in mainstream US culture, Asian Americans are often represented as unfunny, unless they are being mocked for being physically, socially, or culturally different. Asian Americans have thus been both objects and agents of humor, a paradox that reflects the sociocultural positioning of Asian Americans in the United States. Examples of how Asian Americans have been dehumanized and rendered abject through comedy and humor, even as they also negotiate and resist their abjection, reach as far back as the 19th century and continue through the 21st. The sheer volume of such instances—of Asian Americans both being made fun of and being funny on their own terms—demonstrates that comedy and humor are essential, not incidental, to every part of Asian American culture and history.

“Not in Your Backyard!”: A Community Struggle for the Rights of Immigrant Adult Education in San Francisco’s Chinatown

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
L. Ling-chi Wang
Keyword(s):  
Community College ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Asian American ◽  
College Education ◽  
Community College Education ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Educational Rights ◽  
Community Activists ◽  
Admission Policies ◽  
Mainstream Society

This article is a case study of a protracted struggle to establish a branch campus of the San Francisco Community College in Chinatown for thousands of immigrants and working-class adults, focusing mostly on the period since 1997 when the community was slowly politicized and mobilized to fight for their educational rights. Although educational researchers continue to pay close attention to Asian American fights against discriminatory admission policies among the nation’s top colleges and universities, an urgent need to pay more scholarly and political attention to the neediest, poorest, and powerless among Asian Americans clearly exists. To this segment of the Asian American population, access to community college education is a matter of acquiring tools of survival in America. The study illustrates the equal significance of race and class in understanding the development of Asian American communities, how each can be used to obfuscate or disguise the other, and how both can be easily obscured by other issues, especially “progressive” issues or organizations. Asian American community activists and scholars need to pay more attention to class and class conflict with the communities and between the communities and the mainstream society.

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