Quirky!Taiwan

jintana:

doujiang:

vivvo:

erickao:

While these are mere averages, I hope that it encourages Taiwanese Americans to embrace who they are. I feel like I could easily give an hour long presentation on this, but for now, just lend me five minutes of your time. 

When you take a look at the Taiwanese American (TA) community, we make such a big impact. Fashion Designers. Entrepreneurs (Garmin, Nautica, Yahoo, Zappos..so much more). YouTube Celebrities. Musicians. Artists. Journalists. Scientists. Lawyers. We have the potential to be game changers.

Undoubtedly, the two figures I have put up are connected.  Higher education has a positive correlation with higher income, and true enough I’m lucky enough to see pretty much all of my TA peers attend college. Sure, we can’t help what kind of situation we are thrown in when we’re born, but the tragedy of the inequity happens when we don’t utilize all that we’re given. I believe that with knowledge comes power, and with power comes responsibility. Food for thought: Perhaps this suggests that we should be leading the Asian American movement. 

Previous “Taiwanese Pride” drew from being Taiwanese. What I hope to see is a “new” pride in being Taiwanese American. I’ve already seen the TA community do great things for the American society as a whole, and I’ve been waiting for my chance to do the same. 

To be honest, I see so much potential in my peers, but our generation’s nationwide TA network is weaker than the past’s. This is why I joined ITASA and have really appreciated being appointed National Public Relations Director. My mission is to give students the opportunity to connect with each other, which helps us (as a community) begin to realize our untapped potential. Questions?

Given these statistics, shouldn’t the takeaway be that Taiwanese-Americans have a duty to confront their own privilege within the Asian-American community?  Taiwanese-American pride is worthless if it’s just a means of shoring up our own (inherited) privilege and to perpetuate the same Old World racism/classism.

The idea that this means we should be leading the movement or capitalizing on our success is sort of abhorrent to me.  I think what we really need to do is take a step back, examine why we’re achieving to this extent, and mobilize to help form a more inclusive and representative Asian-American movement.

“I think what we really need to do is take a step back, examine why we’re achieving to this extent…”

Guys, I have the answer.  There’s not much to it.  Our parents worked their asses off in a democratic, U.S.-supported Asian country.

Being proud of your heritage isn’t synonymous with being racist or elitist.  Being proud of your heritage means being proud of your heritage, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  

There’s nothing wrong with being proud of your heritage. In fact I think it’s important to embrace your roots and where you came from. But it’s also important to be grateful and aware of your privileges.

While Taiwanese, Indonesian, Japanese and other East Asian and South Asian ethnic groups have been working hard for decades to get to their level of success, they are, at least relatively among all Asians, really privileged. Like QuirkyTaiwan mentioned in their post, these ethnic groups immigrated to the United States to get an education and/or have had decades to get established in the US. 

On the other hand, Laotian, Cambodian, Hmong and Vietnamese (Southeast Asian) groups just recently came to America as refugees because they were totally not trying to get killed in their war torn home countries. They didn’t save up money or prepare to come to the US, so they came poor and uneducated. And no matter how hard they worked their asses off, there are so many barriers that could get in the way of “success” and “achievement”. Language barriers, cultural barriers, families that were separated in refugee camps, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental disorders from war, etc. These hard times do not usually make for the best upbringing, and in turn this generation of Southeast Asian Americans are doing horribly in schools and with just living in general… as you can see from the chart.

It is so imperative to pay attention to specific and disaggregated data like this. It’s important to look at each ethnicity specifically because sometimes the bigger picture is not always the clearer picture.

Asians are smart? 
Yeah, well almost 40% of Southeast Asian American students never finish high school, let alone even get into higher education. I’m proud of being Laos but it honestly surprises me when a Laotian person gets into and can afford attending a good four year university.

Asians are rich and successful?
1 in 4 Hmong people are living in poverty lol. And again, it surprises me when a Southeast Asian person with refugee parents have never lived in a ghetto place.

Now since we’re so poor and dumb, why aren’t these Asian ethnic groups getting help in schools? Why are there no programs to help SE Asians finish high school or get into college? Why is there no support for impoverished SE Asians, who can at least benefit from simple ESL classes or job training? Because we look like other people who don’t need the support, the ones who have been privileged. And our struggles have been avoided because we’ve always been grouped in the same data with them. I hope this new disaggregated data report from the Census Bureau and ACS opens some eyes and breaks some ground. 

TOO LONG; DIDN’T READ VERSION: Be proud. But be aware. 

I was thinking more about this post some more yesterday, especially why the Taiwanese American statistics are so high.  These are, of course, results taken from the American Community Survey of the US Census Bureau, and Taiwanese is not a box on the survey.

This means that the only people who identified as Taiwanese on the survey are people who feel strong enough of a Taiwanese identity, who were informed enough about campaigns like the Write in Taiwanese American census campaign (prior to the big 2010 push.)  These statistics do not include Taiwanese people who simply checked the Chinese box (whether out of looking for the closest approximation or because of their KMT education) or did not respond to the survey at all.

It’s really self selected.  It makes sense that people with higher educational attainment and higher income would be more aware of the option to write in Taiwanese.