DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
User-uploaded Content
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

 Ria Pierre, Roashell Bonadie, Renata Jordan

Education 355

Professor Diaz

            Stereotypes of the Asian Race, Are they really the smartest race and model minorities?

            One day I decided to Google which race is the smartest. The majority of the sites and comments that appeared think Asians are the smartest.  More than likely if you ask any kid in grade school who is the smartest and she or he will probably tell you that the smartest person in their class is an Asian. Why is this? Are Asians just naturally smart?  Why have these stereotypes appeared? How did it come about and how will it affect those people whose lives are frequently interrupted by the ignorant folks and their false assumptions.

              In the United States over the past century, Asian Americans are commonly portrayed as newly arrived immigrants who speak broken English, know karate, and they all look alike.  When they first arrived to the United States, Asians worked as small time merchants, gardeners, domestics, laundry workers, farmers. Starting in the late 1800’s they started to work as railroad workers on the famous Transcontinental Railroad project. The project pitted the Union Pacific (working westward from Nebraska) and the Central Pacific (working eastward from Sacramento) against each other for each mile of railroad track laid.  These Asian immigrants worked for the Central Pacific in some of the most dirtiest and hazardous conditions for any human to work.  Due to these conditions many Asians some resources claims over a 1000 died due to avalanches and explosive accidents as they carved their way through the Sierra Mountains.

            Even though the Chinese worked the hardest, dirtiest, and most dangerous jobs, they were only paid 60% of what European immigrant workers got paid. The Chinese workers actually went on strike demanding to be equally paid the same amount as the other ethnic groups. Officials of the Central Pacific were able to end the strike and force the Chinese workers back to work by cutting off their food supply and starving them into submission.

            When the project was completed on May 10, 1869, there was a famous ceremony for the completion of the two railroads in Promontory Point, Utah.  Although a handful of Chinese workers were allowed to participate in the final ceremony and a small group was personally congratulated by Stanford Leland and his partners who financed the project, the Chinese workers were forbidden from appearing in the famous photograph of the ceremony.  This treatment was unfair even though without their work and their lives, the project may never have been completed.  It was written in Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People that during the speeches for the completion of the railroads they congratulated European immigrant workers for their labor but never mentioned the Chinese. Instead, Chinese men were summarily fired and forced to walk the long distance back to San Francisco forbidden to ride on the railroad they built.

            Asian stereotypes have undergone dramatic changes. Early stereotypes were uniformly negative, reflecting the social, economic, and political in America.  Currently, these Asian American groups are viewed as highly successful, model minorities. In a lot of ways, Asian Americans have done remarkably well in achieving "the American dream" of getting a good education, working at a good job, and earning a good living. So much so that the image many have of Asian Americans is that they are the "model minority".  They are bright, hard working and patience whose example other minority groups should follow. However, the practical reality is slightly more complicated than that. The model minority stereotype that Asian American students are "whiz kids” may cause psychological stress to the young students of trying to maintain an image. This stereotype prevents them from acknowledging academic and emotional problems and seeking help. This has important negative social, political, and economic ramifications for Asian Americans. High- and low-achieving Asian American students experience anxiety to uphold expectations of the model minority stereotype. Stereotyping has led to neglect in the development of student services and support for many undereducated, low-income Asian American students. The model minority stereotypes attribute educational and economic success to all Asian Americans, ignoring between- and within-group differences of assimilation, social, political, economic, and educational backgrounds. It is essential to recognize that these students experience school, social, and familial stresses in order to uphold their "model minority" image. There have been studies that claim Asian American students report having more depressive symptoms and social problems than their White peers and experiencing racial and ethnic discrimination by their peers.

            The connection between race and intelligence has been a subject of debate in both popular science and academic research before the inception of intelligence testing in the early 20th century, particularly in the United States. In earlier periods, scholars thought they had numerous ways to detect differences in intelligence, including measuring the skulls of individuals. There is no consensus on either the social constructs of race or intelligence in academia.

            So are Asians really the smartest race? I believe saying that one race is smarter than any other is ignorant. I’ve known smart Asian American and not so smart Asian Americans. I can say the same thing about every type of person I have ever come into contact with. I am inclined to believe that intelligence is based on a combination of genetics and environment, not to mention other factors that would be impossible to quantify.  The most debatable problem to me is what affects this debate has on our society. The conversation tends to reinforce stereotypes and justify institutional and societal racism. I hope we can eventually get to a day when we can be seen not as a homogeneous group but as individuals.  I think IQ depends a lot on the environment of how the kid grew up in, food, education and parental advisement.  There were and are great minds in this world like Einstein, Frederick Douglass and many others. Einstein parents weren’t scholars like him and Frederick Douglass was a slave.  I believe it’s your determination and drive that concludes your faith.

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.