Arthur Wang: Asian American stereotypes expose ongoing discrimination

Have Asian Americans “made it” in the United States, miraculously overcoming discrimination in the course of a few generations to become the most “successful” minority group in the country?

I’ve been tackling and attempting to add nuance to oversimplifications like these during the course of the last few weeks. The answer to the question is an emphatic “no.”

Recent events continue to confirm a reality that Asian Americans still face discrimination, in forms subtle and overt. Media messages and popular beliefs regarding Asians as a “successful” group are often lip service, unproductive or even harmful toward addressing the issues faced by a community few truly understand. In addition, it homogenizes an incredibly diverse community, one comprised of more than 15 nationalities and ethnicities.

When Asian Americans represent a rather small, albeit growing, percentage of the electorate, politicians may take advantage of scapegoating the group for a myriad of issues. Take, for example, Jeb Bush’s “clarification” that his criticism of immigrants creating “anchor babies” was “more related to Asian people.” In an inane effort to salvage Latino voter outreach, he ruined his chances with another group – though as a matter of political calculation, Asian American outrage won’t affect his chances much, since we are statistically more concentrated in large urban areas which tend to lean liberal.

Bush’s “anchor baby” comments hold a grain of truth, but his comments, which intend to imply that there is an epidemic of exploiting jus soli, or birthright citizenship, are greatly exaggerated. He was referring to the 20,000 or so Chinese mothers, all of whom are rich enough to pay tens of thousands of dollars, who arrive to the U.S. annually to bear children in what is called “maternity tourism.” To say that they are giving birth to “anchor babies” is a misnomer, as many of these new families go right back to their home country – it’s the American passport that they want.

Such political strategizing has led to a widespread but subtle dismissal of Asian Americans, and our being stereotyped as perpetual foreigners. For the most part, other Republican candidates agreed with Bush about “anchor babies,” especially Donald Trump, who proposed eliminating birthright citizenship entirely. Not long after Bush’s comments were made, Trump added his own racist contribution to the anti-Asian discussion in a stereotyped imitation of Asian business negotiators.

Perhaps this notion that anti-immigrant rhetoric can be construed as anti-Asian rhetoric is not obvious enough evidence of discrimination. For that, there’s the fact that a white man was recently arrested for vandalizing structures with the phrase “NO MORE CHINESE” around San Francisco, a city with a long history and sizable demographic of Asian American immigrants. Some were surprised that a city as supposedly progressive as San Francisco would see this sort of blatant racism. This is a reminder that among us are many people who reside in the past when it comes to understanding difference in identity.

Even in 2015, unfounded resentment against Asian Americans results in irrational acts of violence. Just two days before Sept. 11 this year, Inderjit Singh Mukker, a Sikh-American man in a Chicago suburb, was assaulted and injured by a random passerby who called him a “terrorist,” presumably because of the turban worn in observance of his Sikh faith. While all Americans mourn those who were lost to the Sept. 11 attacks, one overlooked minority group suffers from the xenophobia that ensued from parts of the country that channeled mourning into hate, rather than understanding.

One might presume that Asian Americans at UCLA are shielded from this sort of bigotry and discrimination by virtue of numbers. Yet that may not be the case either. Racist fliers posted February 2014 targeted Asian American students. And research suggests that, thanks to a nice mix of the perpetual foreigner and model minority stereotypes, some students feel threatened by the presence of a large Asian population on campus. Living with a randomly assigned Asian roommate does not improve things either.

It’s easy for some of us to laugh and ridicule the ridiculous rhetoric by politicians of the likes of Trump. Then there’s the realization that some people take Trump seriously – like the men who, “inspired” by his comments, urinated on and beat a homeless Hispanic man in a senseless attack. The level of ignorance that still prevails in this country suggests that there’s no way to say the same wouldn’t happen to an Asian American.