Let me start by saying that
being a 5’2 Asian girl with perpetual baby-face in this world is not easy.
After spending close to two
years in the United States, I’ve grown to love this country for the values that
it holds: Freedom, tolerance and democracy. However, I do take one issue on the
fact that most people here seem to believe the stereotype of Asians being meek,
quiet little creatures. Or maybe they only believe that about me.
This is a problem that
plagued me even back home. Usually men (Not a social justice warrior, this is
merely an observation), but also older women with seniority, either perceived
or not, would be surprised if I stood up for myself or spoke up. Case in point,
I would request something to be done by my co-worker and he would not do it for
weeks on end. But when I lost my temper and lectured him about personal
responsibility, he would ask me why I was being such a harridan.
Before I left the Battalion
at Texas A&M, I was criticized for not putting sufficient effort into the
newspaper, i.e not suggesting story ideas, as well as picking up stories only
to drop them at the last minute. When I protested that I had submitted story
ideas dutifully every week and had only dropped one story since I joined the
newspaper, the assistant editor’s eyebrows literally disappeared behind her
hairline before she disdainfully remarked that she did not appreciate “my
attitude”. The attitude of defending oneself when wrongly accused?
There was an article
published at The Atlantic recently that convinced me to write this piece. An
interviewee who faced the same problems as I did, described how being an
Asian-American woman means often standing between a rock and a hard place. “We either have to choose to be
that meek, compliant Asian person or we have to be dragon lady,” she says.
“There’s no middle ground.”
I can at
least confirm that this is not an Asian-American problem. I have lived in four
countries, and this has been a problem for me everywhere I went. And I
certainly don’t think that it is a problem that arises due to prejudice towards
Asians, instead it is a combination of social construct and general impressions
towards Asian women. People in general loathe conflict, and those that stir up
conflict. That is why we dislike overbearing, aggressive dragon people. But for
an Asian woman, if we took the compliant, non-conflict route in getting things
done, nothing would ever get done because we aren’t taken seriously. And if we
tried being more assertive, we would be accused of being unnecessarily hostile.
I’m not
saying that Americans are much worse than my home country, but I did hope that
I would not have to face this here. Stereotypes like these will probably always
persist, but given that I am a woman in my late twenties on track to complete
my Master’s degree, I speak several languages and I am looking to enter a
competitive, demanding job force, it would be nice to be treated like an
intellectual equal, rather than be spoken to like a misbehaving child.
