Week 2 Eden Knight A03

Week 2
Eden Knight
A03


Shirley Hune's "Fight the Tower: Women of Color in Academia Manifesto ix Prologue: Taking Action: Asian American Faculty against Injustices in the Academy." was an eye opening piece. It made me think of representations of Asian Americans in certain groups. UC Davis is very diverse. There is a large proportion of Asian Americans on campus. But this is not representative of society. Asians are very much a minority group even though it may not seem like it on the UC Davis campus. When inspecting campus closer, the ethnic range of my professors is small. At UC Davis, I have only been taught by 10 female professors, yet I have taken 35 classes. And of those 10 female professors, only one, Professor Valverde, is of Asian descent. Professor Valverde is actually the first Asian teacher I have ever had in my whole educational career. This is proof of the systematic discrimination against Asians in America.
This is paired with the stereotype and expectation that all Asians are geniuses. The expectation that Asians will score higher in standardised tests. The assumption that Asians are taking all the places in Universities and Graduate Schools. Although being seen as clever because you are Asian is a positive stereotype, it still has implications on the race as a whole. It's the expectation that causes social problems. If Asians are so smart, where is the Asian representation in University educators? Yet more evidence that Asians are seen as foreigners. As Professor Valverde mentioned in lecture: even if Asians are sixth or seventh generation, they are still seen as foreigners. The perpetual foreigner. A term I relate with all too well.

Question: How do you break a positive stereotype? 

This bar chart depicts the distribution of teachers in public elementary and secondary schools. In 2015-2016, Asian teachers only accounted for 2% of the teacher population.

Sources: 

Image: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), “Public School Teacher Data File,” 2003–04; and National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS), “Public School Teacher Data File,” 2015–16. See Digest of Education Statistics 2017, table 209.10

Shirley Hune. “Fight the Tower: Women of Color in Academia Manifesto ix Prologue: Taking Action: Asian American Faculty against Injustices in the Academy.” (2019, October 11).