If I were of Asian descent, I'd probably have a subscription so I could read that article.
If I were of Asian descent, I'd probably have a subscription so I could read that article.
If I were of Asian descent I'd call myself lucky for not living in such a humid climate.
Huh, I don't have a subscription but the link worked for me. I'm not sure how to fix it.
I wasn't complaining about your link. I'm on my phone and the limits are much tougher.
If I were Asian American or an alert Dutchman, I would have noticed NYM, not NYTM.
I thought a lot of it was more about Yang's own issues than anything larger, to put it kindly.
Yang:
Let me summarize my feelings toward Asian values: Fuck filial piety. Fuck grade-grubbing. Fuck Ivy League mania. Fuck deference to authority. Fuck humility and hard work. Fuck harmonious relations. Fuck sacrificing for the future. Fuck earnest, striving middle-class servility.
This morning, though it makes me very sad, I am not at all surprised this appeals to you, LB.
If I were of Asian descent, I'd run my life like a Chipotle.
This morning, though it makes me very sad, I am not at all surprised this appeals to you, LB.
Fuck off.
Okay, I read the whole thing, although not closely as I will later. An excellent article, but for the most part comes to exactly the wrong conclusions. I could possibly blockquote the descriptions of the whites that are the bamboo ceiling that these Asian-Americans run into.
Ask yourself, do we really want our kids to emulate the styles and methods of our top CEO's, financiers, politicians, hedge fund traders? War, economic collapse, incredible social and economic injustice...as these to be our role models? Has it gotten us a great economy, a peaceful and just world? Do we need even more aggression, flash, egoism, confidence, individualism, greed, callousness? Are you people out of your fucking minds?
"Asian values" examples in 10, tweaked and moderated, could just possibly save us. "American values" will kill the fucking race and world.
13 "race" s/b "species" s/b "all living things"
If I were of Asian descent I would be happy that it is possible to be a Dutch native speaker without at the same time being a Dutchman.
[this is deep, man!]
11: The burrito chain or the pepper?
Wow:
The student then replies, in the loudest, most emphatic voice he can muster: "To crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women--in my bed!"
Would it be racist to make a joke about fortune cookies here?
I have not read the article and barely skimmed Cosma's links.
Having said that, I was really struck on the bus the other day by a sort of Asian prejudice, and I wonder if it doesn't somewhat reflect this view of Asians as lifeless people. (Thomas Friedman reasoning alert.)
A young woman who was working in a community health clinic over the summer and studying for the MCATs was talking to someone who was probably one of her parents' acquaintances. Both white. She seemed like a very nice, reasonably bright young woman and did not appear to agree with the man. He suggested that her chances were probably pretty good at a top school, because admissions committees want a diversified class. (In the back of my mind I thought, medical school classes --forget leadership--are at maybe more than 50% women right?) She said that she wasn't exactly a minority. His response: "I bet that you're more of a minority than you think, what with all of the Asian applicants."
I think Chad Orzel gets it right in Cosma's last link. Roughly, what he says is that the problem isn't that various minority groups have behaviors that make it hard for them to reach the top of corporate (or other) hierarchies. It's that, for the most part, getting to those positions requires an extremely douchey set of behaviors usually found among super-entitled, loudmouthed, obnoxious white men. I don't think the typical American white man is much more socialized to be this kind of self-promoting blowhard than the typical Asian-American. The lessons Yang says Amy Chua got from her parents -- "Be modest, be humble, be simple," "Never complain or make excuses," "If something seems unfair at school, just prove yourself by working twice as hard and being twice as good." -- sound more or less identical to things my parents told me.
...sound more or less identical to things my parents told me.
Me also. If it weren't for the internet, I would have never learned how to be obnoxious.
17: Actually, that made me wonder if anyone involved knew what "lamentation" means. (I can't decide whether it would be sadder if they didn't or if they did.)
19, 20: My father's Asian. "Never complain" is just about the opposite of the message he gave me and my brother when we were growing up. In fact, judging from his father's career, "Complain loudly, often, publicly, sarcastically, and with no regard for the political consequences" might well be the family motto. (I suspect that's all just one word in Pashto.) On the other hand, merely working twice as hard and being twice as good would have definitely counted as slacking in my family's eyes.
The lessons Yang says Amy Chua got from her parents -- "Be modest, be humble, be simple," "Never complain or make excuses," "If something seems unfair at school, just prove yourself by working twice as hard and being twice as good." -- sound more or less identical to things my parents told me.
On the other hand, the foreign stereotype of Americans is definitely one of arrogance and complaining. For instance, Americans are much more prone to, and much better at, complaining about poor customer service than, say, Brits (despite a great deal of shared culture). So regardless of what children are explicitly taught, something in the mainstream culture seems to be rubbing off.
Anyone here actually see significant numbers of the arrogant/complaining set on a regular basis? I certainly know the type, but it's not the majority of people I meet.
Possible theories:
1. Obnoxious people make a bigger splash in people's mind and get over-remembered.
2. Like everyone else, I travel in a horizontal layer of people which all has the sample bias of ME and therefore doesn't reflect reality.
3. This stereotype is really confined to B-school douche bags.
4. This stereotype is code for loudmouthed yankees.
5. I'm this type of person so my yardstick is hopelessly skewed.
What 22, said, yeah. In my experience it's a stereotype with some substance to it. However, it might be that the main reason people see it abroad is that US people are encountering what is, from their experience, substandard service and are complaining where they might not normally be people who complain much at home?
Much like the way I want to run amok with some sort of large bladed weapon when queuing in certain countries.
I lean toward 5, though I'd rephrase it as the cultural baseline being higher so you just don't perceive at as being exceptional or douchey except in extremis. Which it wouldn't be.
To give an anecdatum, my (still very American) mum complains about poor service a lot more than I or my brother (both heavily anglicised) do. I don't think she's being douchey, but it's not something we (and I suspect many Brits) would be comfortable with.
However, it might be that the main reason people see it abroad is that US people are encountering what is, from their experience, substandard service and are complaining where they might not normally be people who complain much at home?
Oh definitely. But this raises chicken-and-egg/pseudo-Sapir-Whorf type questions. Is American customer service better (and it definitely is on average) because Americans are more likely to kick up a fuss about it otherwise?
Americans have a hundred words for douchebag.
I should note in fairness that the stereotype of Brits abroad is complaining about the unavailabilty of egg and chips for breakfast. So there's definitely a tourist-bias in the arrogance/complaining stereotype, but at least for Americans, it also seems to hold even for long term assimilated expats. Lynne Guist's blog has some good posts on this sort of thing (her post on the differing uses/purposes of compliments in American and British English is very good indeed).
we (and I suspect many Brits) would be comfortable with.
Yeah. I tend to only complain in real extremis,* however, judging by my wife's stories from work there's a substantial chunk of middle-class and upper-middle-class southern England that don't feel that discomfort.
* although by that point I'm normally pretty near the end of my tether so the complaint won't be polite.
Let me contextualize 5 by saying that Heebie U is the opposite of this stereotype. There is rarely any grade-grubbing or complaining - nowhere near the scale I saw at U of Michigan as an undergrad. (There is a ton of laziness, but the kids are very willing to attribute their failures to themselves.)
They definitely don't illustrate the Asian stereotype, but they don't illustrate what Yang sees as how white people are either, whatsoever.
(At school I am definitely loud and complainy. But, uh, I still think of myself as a nice person. Or something.)
4. This stereotype is code for loudmouthed yankees.
That's my guess. Whenever I have to rev myself up to make a complaint, I call it "channelling my inner New Yorker." I have to make official complaints on behalf of my bosses all the time, and it's disturbing how effective it can be.
Okay, I want to distinguish complainy:
If something doesn't suit me, I'm going to try to get it changed. Or at least investigate how many people it suits, and see if I'm the odd one out or not.
Here's what I'm not: small talk consisting of a running list of complaints about the world. That is super common in the people I meet, in a very fatalist manner, and it drives me nuts after a while.
Is that (loud, complainy) really a stereotype about yankees? I would think of it as a stereotype about New Yorkers, which is a different (more racially charged, in some ways) thing.
I find myself needing to remind people that just because I know how to do something that they don't know how to do and just because I was willing to do it once to show them, it does not make that task my job. These kids today get so whiny about that kind of shit and as I get older I find myself being less helpful.
There's yankees outside of New York?
34: But enough about parenting.
36: That also, but this is at work. The new people find out that I can something that takes them an hour in five minutes and expect me to do it instead of paying attention when I show them how to do what is their job.
(Confidential to Moby - I know you were talking about work.)
(Confidentially to heebie - I realize that, but I'd not thought about how exactly it fits with raising kids.)
If something doesn't suit me, I'm going to try to get it changed.
Well, yeah, that's my point. The British default (by stereotype, at least) is "Mustn't grumble".
37: hah, I just sent an email in response to that kind of request this morning that said, basically, "it's important to persevere, kiddo! YOU CAN DO IT!"
40: 5 probably does stand. But I'm definitely surrounded by "musn't grumble" types.
[Also at this time of year I get weary all over again by the pervasiveness of VBS. VBS VBS VBS VBS. (Vacation Bible School.) It's one of the background hum things that makes me feel like I can't talk freely about my beliefs.]
(((( OF TOPIC ==Much as I admire slacktivist and wish that other religious people were like him, sometime I wonder if he has ever actually read the Old Testament -- http://www.patheos.com/community/slacktivist/2011/06/11/the-god-who-brought-you-out-of-egypt/
)))))))
Also, you needed about three more (((. Nesting is important.
Also, you needed about three more (((. Nesting is important.
Otherwise it's empty nesting.
re: 40
Yeah, definitely. Plus a bit of silent seething. Or the odd tentative polite request/crypto-complaint:
'If it's not too much trouble, ... 'etc
The worst is when you are dealing with the sort of arseholes who can't decode those or choose not to.
I was very happy with the customer service in Britain.
A) Retail employees seem to not be so miserable in their jobs, and aren't forced to spout robotic blather to the customers instead of interacting on a human level.
B) You don't have to throw away your own trash at a cafeteria or fast-food place. What?!?
Maybe the people who complain are accustomed to visiting places like Bali.
I swear, my perspective on all this is so different from Yang's. I haven't made it all the way through, but so far:
1. Yang is pretty. He should hit on me.
2. Mao complains that there's a secret system that explained why others were getting what he never had--"a high-school sweetheart" figured prominently on this list--. Dude. Maybe if your Mom didn't hang up on me when I called. Maybe if you were allowed to come out with the rest of us. Maybe then we could have gotten to the sweetheart stage. God knows I wanted to.
Back to the article...
re: 49.1
I like this, too. I actually find the ordinary mild grumpiness of people quite comforting. Obsequiousness is a bit disturbing. What's rage inducing isn't people's affect but what they do.
I was very happy with the customer service in Britain.
A) Retail employees seem to not be so miserable in their jobs, and aren't forced to spout robotic blather to the customers instead of interacting on a human level.
B) You don't have to throw away your own trash at a cafeteria or fast-food place. What?!?
A) A lot of things that are de rigeur in the US are more or less unheard of in the UK. Free refills, attentive refilling of tap water, general customer-is-always-right-or-at-least-to-be-accommodated approach. It's more of a process thing than an individual interaction level thing.
B) Cafeteria, no. Fast food place, usually yes.
The lack of free refills, now that was hard to get used to. Suddenly it's more cost-effective to order beer than soda or iced tea.
I was just trying to explain bottomless cups of coffee to Newt -- he couldn't understand why it makes sense. I told him that anyone who wants one cup of coffee probably really wants two, and if people are encouraged to save money by drinking less coffee than they want, they'll go around grumpy and unpleasant all day. Better that the price should be set so as to encourage people to drink as much coffee as they feel they need, and reduce the number of undercaffeinated zombies stumbling around.
... If there's a thesis to the article, it's that the cultural patterns that lead to academic success in children of Asian immigrants are socially and culturally counterproductive. ...
A thesis that (at best) depends on the extremely debatable assumption that only thing that matters is how the top 1% do. The article states Asians do well economically on average, so the cultural patterns aren't all that counterproductive, why is it important (even if true) if they aren't optimal for the top 1% of Asians?
54: Don't even try to explain UNLIMITED PANCAKE to the poor kid.
The worst is when you are dealing with the sort of arseholes who can't decode those or choose not to.
At that point, it's best to reach for your inner New Yorker.
re: 57
Or, you know, the inner Glaswegian.*
* not actually Glaswegian, but it's not like people know the difference anyway.
What's wromg with fatalism? Too much of it, especialy applied to personal decisions, is a big problem. But as a matter of style, I would strongly prefer the company of taciturn fatalists to vocal complainers.
I don't care whether or not the fatalists are Asian. The OP article does not at all describe the mainland Chinese I have known personally or their kids.
And yet, here I am. By the way, I really appreciate the recommendation of Laxness' Independent People.
Uh, yankees You, Southerners, don't know the first thing about the reserved, non-complaining Mainers and old-school New Hampshire-ites, who are the true Yankees.
This is just the misinformed notion that anybody above the Mason-Dixon line (or in the case of Canadians, anyone below their border) is a Yankee/Yank. This is completely wrong. (I'm half Yankee and take umbrage.)
But do you eat apple pie for breakfast?
Bostoniangilr, I think this is the word "Yankee" as used by European people to mean "Anyone from the United States".
the true Yankees
Are they the ones that make the overpriced scented candles, sold in shopping malls?
62: Yeah, Europeans can't tell us apart. They think we all have funny accents.
Oh, I know that Ned.
I was staying with my BF's parents, and his Dad's grandmother is British, so was his Dad technically. His grandmother remarried after her first husband died in WWI and moved to Canada.
BF's mother makes bad tea, so I was making sure that he warmed the pot first, and he joked, "What do you think I am, a Yank?" I don't think he got that being a Yankee is a part of my heritage that I really value.
Stanley, those candles are the most disgusting thing ever.
I like customer service at Nordstrom, and I love their bank. Macys sucks, and yet they survive
66: Pie are round. Cornbread are square.
But as a matter of style, I would strongly prefer the company of taciturn fatalists to vocal complainers.
But this isn't the choice I was describing for complainy. The complainy that drives me nuts is incessant complainy-drivel, with an "Oh, how unsolvable" air to it.
I was teaching an upper-level writing class for non-majors this semester, which, as usual for such courses at this school, was about 2/3 foreign-born Asian students. At the end of the semester, as they turned in final papers, three Korean students stayed to chat with me about their lives and ask my advice. (Why anyone wants to ask an 8th-year PhD student making zero dollars to work like a dog for career advice is far beyond me.)
One was American-born, young, cocky, defiant, wants to be a film actor but is anxious about being short and Asian. At the end of the semester, he had several failed papers to rewrite and was trying to get motivated. One moved to the US some time ago, and is a dreamy, funny, literary adult businessman who wants to do something more creative with his life--he could have worked harder in my class and gotten a better grade, but he was in it for pleasure. The third had just moved to the US to study science at college, and was so ridiculously shy that every time I asked her a direct question, she would purse her lips and shake her head vigorously. But she revised the fuck out of every paper she wrote and discovered that she's actually a really good writer. Also: not impassive or blindly obedient. Great thinker, extremely expressive, has a difficult anxiety disorder.
They brought up some of these stereotypes, about how Korean-Americans are supposed to be repressed, impassive, obedient, unemotional, whatever, but only the actor guy seemed to feel this was some big pressure on him because he was thinking of himself in terms of national marketability. Would America buy him as a romantic lead, etc?
Maybe it's because my students were not Stuyvesant/Harvard kids. We're the college in NYC that you go to if you're a reasonably smart immigrant or child of immigrants who wants a decent education, and leave the door open for grad school, on the cheap. I find that whenever people want to talk about Asian-American stereotypes, they wring their hands over the highest-achieving Ivy-bound kids--good God, what will become of them if they don't have dates?--and ignore the fact that it's possible to have a great life, and possibly a slightly more "free" life, if you don't go to the tippy-top schools.
Unlike at my very competitive and very Asian undergrad college, where I had exactly zero Asian friends because, as the interviewed young guy says about Stuyvesant, it was super-segregated, especially along Asian/non-Asian lines, my students make friends with each other. The Korean guy flirts with the Russian girl. The Muslim guy is dating a Caribbean woman. I complain about them a lot, but not being at a competitive school does seem to reduce the weird in-groupy segregation stuff.
What's wromg with fatalism?
I still think that the ideal involves some appropriate balance.
incessant complainy-drivel, with an "Oh, how unsolvable" air to it.
Yes, this is pessimal. I was mostly responding to the casual slur against fatalism, not addressing hg's options. Though: I would cheerfully insult this style of speech, hoping that good-natured insults would shut the idiot up without inflicting emotional pain.
Yes, balancing ambition and serenity every day is a tough call, easier to manage if daily life is without serious problems or chronic ankle-biting antagonists. My ambition is to not have a facial tic next month; perhaps this cigarette will help.
To give an anecdatum, my (still very American) mum complains about poor service a lot more than I or my brother (both heavily anglicised) do. I don't think she's being douchey, but it's not something we (and I suspect many Brits) would be comfortable with.
Interesting. I have the exact opposite anecdatum to proffer! I never ever lodge complaints with anyone official, except in the most egregious cases. English boyfriend, on the other hand, is always pushing me to be more assertive with my property managers, bosses, cable company, etc....I think it has to come down to personality differences.
The complainy that drives me nuts is incessant complainy-drivel, with an "Oh, how unsolvable" air to it.
CA is kind of like this and makes me nuts. I start listing possible solutions and courses of action and then I feel like Lady Macbeth.
I think it has to come down to personality differences.
Additional anecdote, I have a good friend who is first-generation Chinese-American who is far more willing than I to complain about bad service, etc . . .
77: I have a co-worker who is a fairly recent immigrant from China. I'll try to piss him off and see if he complains. For science.
IMlimitedE, the people most likely to give Americans a bad rep overseas are rich, elderly midwesterners. I have no idea why they should tend to be more obnoxious than rich, elderly southerner (usually sweet), rich, elderly New Yorkers (usually entertaining), rich elderly Californians (usually barking mad), but so it is. I'm sure this is very unfair to the great majority of their co-regionalists; as The Master put it, "Why do the wrong people travel, when the right people stay at home?"
English boyfriend, on the other hand, is always pushing me to be more assertive with my property managers, bosses, cable company, etc....I think it has to come down to personality differences.
All types of English people are very good at complaining except the lower middle class. However it's the lower middle class that provides most of the stereotypes, so there you are.
are rich, elderly midwesterners
To be fair to rich, elderly Midwesterners (since for certain values of 'rich' I'm related to many of them), the ones that actually give a rat's ass probably don't seem "Midwestern" to someone who has never seen the sun set over Indianapolis.
81. I'm sure it's true, I have to have my nose rubbed in most stereotypes to recognise them. Does the sun look fine going down over Indianapolis?
I have no idea. Whenever I go to Indianapolis, I stay inside.
the people most likely to give Americans a bad rep overseas are rich, elderly midwesterners.
I'm pretty sure this means Denver ski lodge types. They give American a bad rap to me, too.
There are no slopes in Denver. And people from Denver aren't midwestern.
People from Denver are sort of Ultimate Americans.
84 and 88 are making me wonder if heebie actually lives in America, or has just been pretending really well for a long time.
90: Really? Unfortunately, the parts of Denver I've seen have been hyper-steroids-suburbia. They seemed totally devoid of any regional markers.
What's a "Denver ski lodge type"? Rich snob? Pot-smoking guy? Christian wholesome family?
And then I threw ski lodge in there to specify the upper crust who might want a European vacation to feel like a ski vacation, which seems like it would annoy a European.
Also, people from Denver are, I believe, the least overweight people in America, so you're eating from the wrong side of the pizza there by claiming they embody the American tourist.
87: As a friend who lives in Boulder put it, Denver is where the Great Plains go to die.
You think American tourists who go abroad are going to be as overweight as the average American? That seems unlikely.
I assume Heebie is thinking of like 3 people she knows and their friends she met at a party or something.
People from Denver are sort of Ultimate Americans.
No, people from Hawaii are the Ultimate Americans. People from Alaska are the Penultimate Americans.
97: Uh, I think I already addressed this in 91.
McManus' 13 pretty much sums up my feelings about this article, oddly enough.
A couple of additional things:
1. It seems to me an unfortunate side-effect of success that it often makes itself appear irrelevant. By any reasonable metric, the Asian achievement in North America is absolutely remarkable -- precisely because it happened in the face of deep-rooted and endemic racism -- and filial piety, harmonious relations and sacrificing for the future are the sort of things that would seem pretty key to that. And that can only be pooh-poohed by someone who takes their positive consequences for granted. It's understandable to want Asian-American education and parenting to become more open, insofar as it's needed, to acclimating to American society. But taking this stuff for granted to this degree strikes me as a bit nuts.
2. I read the article's perceptions about stereotypes of Asians and find myself blinking. It makes me wonder if sometimes we as minority groups become over-obsessed with things we imagine others thinking about us that are more a product of our relationships with / perceptions of ourselves. I've grown up with Asian kids at all levels of life and schooling and never seen this supposed invisibility and deference and lack of socialization that's meant to be a consequence of traditional Asian parenting. Same with immigrant kids from strict upbringings of other backgrounds, from the Caribbean to the South Asian. I've known & seen people of all these groups who were socially ill-at-ease, of course, but not in any noticeably larger proportions of their populace than of any other group. So... what?
I did once see some obnoxious tourists in a small German town who had huge American flags on their T-shirts and were mad that the bank wasn't open yet and upset that not everyone spoke English. I was embarrassed to be from the same country. I think they were from Texas.
My aunt and uncle are in rural Colorado (lived in Telluride in the pre-airport Hollywood infested era), but they lived in Denver for a while. I liked their house in downtown Denver. It was a walkable neighborhood. I think it was a mostly gay area.
95: It is true that the Great Plains don't end until Denver, but the west starts well before the mountains.
You think American tourists who go abroad are going to be as overweight as the average American? That seems unlikely.
They'd never fit them through the door of the plane.
Relevant bit from that Disney article I linked to on the other post:
When I taught for a year at a school in Lima, Peru, there was no greater hero among the students than the kid who had just returned from Orlando. They didn't want to hear about California or New York. I had one student, called Lucho. He came back from his trip with a thick stack of photos, in one of those paper wallets. He wanted to pass them around. And kill 30 minutes of class? Ah, you twisted my arm, Lucho. Unfortunately the pictures were entirely of women's bottoms. It wasn't "nice" or shapely bottoms that Lucho had been after, but gigantically obese ones. They've never seen people who look like us, most places in the world. I confiscated the pictures and stood red-faced, flip-booking through them in front of the class. Shot after zoomed shot of enormous, complexly dimpled bottoms shrink-wrapped into the most outrageously tight and revealing spandex. Young Lucho had found enough of these to fire through an entire roll. It was hard to come down on a student who showed such thoroughness of observation. I thought about him every time I saw one of these Americans go pounding by.
The job of Unfogged is to take all generalizations and explain why they're actually overgeneralizations. Which is all well and good, but sometimes it's just the truth that all people from Denver are terrible.
106: But sometimes Unfogged explains why some statement isn't general enough.
My favorite US tourists I've run into abroad are groups of southerners. They just so often seem so excited and gee-whiz about everything. "What is this GEL-ato stuff? Oh, look, honey, they make a special kind of ice cream here! Let's try it!"
Along the same lines, I said to Jammies yesterday that I never get sick of hearing Texans say "Dadgummit" and "Dadgum" unironically.
Often missed in the worrying about American educational competitiveness is the fact that in China they're not just raising generations of kids better educated in STEM, these kids are all Chinese. In order to close that gap, America needs to focus on raising more successful Chinese kids - it's a matter of national security.
Somehow that reminds me of something I read about the Cold War space race once, worrying whether the Russians' Germans were smarter than our Germans.
Yang (or maybe it was someone else) complains that fellow students at his NE college would smile at passersby on campus. What total douchebags. What's next, saying hello? And the total douchebag move, calling somebody by their first name, that's always a dead giveaway.
Actually what I think Yang is describing among his fellow Asians is also called arrogance, which can be perceived as the opposite.
110: ObSF: China Mountain Zhang
111: If that wasn't Tom Lehrer, it should have been.
God I hate writing research statements.
111,114.2: It is reported in The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, and depicted in the movie.
Ven ze rockets go up, who cares wer they come down--that's not my department.
On the other hand, merely working twice as hard and being twice as good would have definitely counted as slacking in my family's eyes.
It's sometimes strange to me that this wasn't most people's area of rebellion, if they had one. I'm pretty sure I funneled all the drinking and staying out late and any other bad impulse into a lifelong commitment to mediocrity, in response to the one commandment I figured I wouldn't get punished for breaking: the commandment to be successful and hard-working. I never broke a single rule. I just got hooked on not living up to expectations. Which, you know, didn't work out entirely well for me.
(I assume Jewish parents handle the enforcement of excellence differently from Asian parents in ways it would not be that interesting to explore.)
Also a vote for Bob's 13.
He basically sees the structure--look, sociopathic white men dominate our society--and all he can think is, why won't they let me into the club?
33: Yankees vs. New Yorkers is not, I think, a distinction people in most of the country make. We're all just one big vaguely Jewish creature. The further you get from a place, the more distinctions are lost. People in Texas would say "you're from...Connecticut, right? Oh, yeah, Kentucky." And people from here think Kentucky is the midwest, so.
118: Truly, he was a man ahead of his time.
No, people from Hawaii are the Ultimate Americans.
OH, REALLY? WELL LET'S SEE THE BIRTH CERTIFICIATES
And people from here think Kentucky is the midwest, so.
Seriously, parts of it are. Parts are definitely not.
No, parts of Ohio are actually Kentucky.
That's OK, parts of Pennsylvania are actually Ohio.
124: For example, the Cincinnati airport.
Minor thing that interested me in the article: varying your intonation as a tactic for being more attractive. You could teach a course on just the opposite among a certain wide swath of gays. Intonation is femme. (I have a funny story about this but it involves a Russian accent and doesn't type well.)
I would like to posit that Heebie meant "Aspen" and that her comment make a lot more sense in that light, while still having nothing to do with the Midwest.
(Upper) Midwesterns at home are loath to complain about anything service related while still in the establishment or at least in the known hearing distance of its employees. They will complain endlessly once they leave. I don't know why they would turn into complaining machines in other countries, but stranger things have happened.
129.2: Perhaps because the waitstaff in other countries speak Furrin, and so hearing distance effectively shrinks to zero?
117.last: I don't know how representative it is, but in my case it was always made clear that while of course my parents would love me no matter what, they would find that much easier to do if I demonstrated crushing intellectual superiority over my merely-American classmates.
120
Yankees vs. New Yorkers is not, I think, a distinction people in most of the country make. We're all just one big vaguely Jewish creature. ...
In my experience Yankees refers to long time inhabitants of New England (which does not include New York). And it isn't unheard of for them to complain about the malign influence of "New York money" on the region.
I'm not sure what my basis for this is -- I can't think of a real life example -- but I think I've got the rich-Midwesterner stereotype that Chris Y is invoking rattling around in my head. The picture I have is of someone very intent on not being taken advantage of, but not great on actually identifying when it's happening, so always getting into little tightlipped battles over pointless stuff with confused service employees who really weren't trying to pull anything funny.
I quite liked the OP, especially the point the biculturalism can be as much about deportment and self-presentation as anything else.
While I don't feel like I know anyone with the degree of agressive nihilism that Yang describes in himself, probably because such people are nearly impossible to get to know, I do feel like several of my Asian-American friends (and children of immigrant from other ethnic backgrounds) see themselves in a critical relationship with both their parent and mainstream American culture. Some of them are more social or expressive and have found places for themselves in the arty/Bohemian/intellectual/punk rock sections of both communities, where others walk a lonelier or more self-conflicted path. I think it's a real strenght of the article that it's a provocation about Asian-American (men), but also a reflection on different forms of self-making and success in America.
I would like to posit that Heebie meant "Aspen" and that her comment make a lot more sense in that light, while still having nothing to do with the Midwest.
Unfortunately I've never been to Aspen, but if it helps me make sense, I'll take it.
I was more positing that chris y was not actually identifying midwesterners, but seeing Aspen types and thinking of them as being midwesterners.
Let's tie some threads together.
You people on the mainland do your Asian stereotypes ALL WRONG.
I was just thinking of you the other day, NPH, wondering where you've been. Good to see you.
137: But you all suck at "You might be a redneck" jokes.
You people on the mainland do your Asian stereotypes ALL WRONG
Japanese = public employee, probably lazy
Chinese = unscrupulous businessman
Filipino = janitor / secretary
Korean = short order cook or petty thief / stripper
How am I doin' here?
138: Working my butt off, mostly, but lurking occasionally.
140: Was thinking more of Asian nationals or first-generation immigrants, and especially that a number of the stereotypes (e.g. Koreans) need a much larger dollop of "do not fuck with".
My current roommate is 1st-generation Korean-American. She's pretty Westernized, enough so that when I first met her to see the apartment, I guessed that she was at least 2nd generation.
She's at the early-mid-life-crisis stage I hit at about thirty: wanting to do something better with her life, wondering whether it might be easier just to succumb to cultural pressure and be a housewife, realizing that that path really isn't open any more, feeling stymied and depressed.
Some of her situation seems culturally specific: her relatives feel entitled to say things that mine would repress but think very vividly, yet they are willing to backstop her in a period of unemployment, which mine wouldn't. However, there's a lot in her situation that is familiar to any over-achieving, under-performing, career-confused person, no matter the base culture. The "God why didn't I just get married already" pressure isn't unique to Korean women.
She does eat kimchi and lots of sriracha, so there the stereotypes hold true.
I lived for a while as a kid in Korea. My family had this sweet old Korean widow as a housekeeper. I nearly choked on my kimchi when I found out she owned multiple apartment buildings.
The Asian-American stuff like this that I sometimes see in the media bears no resemblance to my experience. Which is strange since a fair sized percentage of my social milieu in college was made up of Asians who in some sense should have reflected this stereotype. Perhaps it's sample bias. But in any case they didn't seem any different as a group than their white peers, with all the variety and similarities that that entailed.
146: Were they nice apartments or was she a slum lord on the side?
I keep thinking I'll go back and finish that article, but at this point that's not likely. It could be because I read the first page and then the last page, trying to see where he'd end up, then clicked back a page to try to figure out how he got where he was, then gave up about four pages from the start. It's not just that it's too anecdote-driven for me, though I think it is, or that he's got a very particular definition of Asian-American but doesn't really explore the wider diversity within that category, but I also think there's a couple of things going on that could be more carefully separated.
One is the whole cultural immigration assimilation thing, the other is the real question of why you have one group of people overrepresented in areas that are conventionally seen as paths to the top of certain kinds of careers and then underrepresented at the top. It seems different from the pipeline issue that comes up in a lot in many diversity discussions. I generally agree that becoming an asshole CEO is not really a goal that more should have, but if people are missing out on fairly routine rounds of promotions in the workaday world that other people with similar or worse job performance are getting, then that is a real issue. If they're turning down promotions or choosing not to get into positions that are in line for promotions, that's still an issue, but a different kind.
And if it doesn't actually make sense to use the category "Asian-American" as a single group and then evaluate performance across that group, that's also something worth discussing. I find it less interesting to read about Asian Playboys and Tiger Moms.
(I would read Asian Playboy, but just for the articles.)
Shearer gets it partially right in 132. I've never met a Jewish Yankee. I suppose there might be somebody who converted, but I haven't met him or her yet.
A high school friend, from China, converted to Judaism after college. Also, he went into finance and became a conservative (in high school he was more or less apolitical). I wonder if he'll become a CEO.
151: Sandy Koufax played for the Dodgers.
144.3 sounds Italian.
The term "red sauce joint" came up this weekend. Perhaps this includes Sriracha. (Well or gochujang, the most delicious substance on earth.)
153: but only for the Brooklyn Dodgers for a coupla years.
147.last: But the commercial possibilities of "I Am a Tortured Soul" have been much more fully exploited than those of "I Am a Tortured Soul Because I'm Korean".
132, 151: We're talking about two different things: "yankee" as used from within and far without. People in Texas who would be likely to use the word really don't think of Maine as having a character distinct from New Jersey, it seems to me, and I have certainly heard it used to refer to New Yorkers and other non-New Englanders.
157: I'm well aware of that, but as a member of the group I get to make noise about how other people are getting it wrong.
||
My God, this Republican debate is killing me. Can we blow up Michelle Bachman? Drinking game, anyone?
|>
158.1: Just be happy that people west of the Rockies still care enough to distinguish Massachusetts from South Carolina most of the time.
South Carolina wears Massachusetts like a halo.
Although they find Vermont to be more kongenial headware.
tldr
could someone give that writer a hand a do a thesis statement?
Nobody in Korea eats Sriracha. Nor anybody anywhere else in Asia, for that matter. It's strictly domestic.
I'm a smart asian-american, and my parent's were all bitching at me at be smart, and then I figured out I wanted to be a tortured artist whose genius they wound never comprehend, but it hasn't panned out yet, and now I've talked to all these nerdy east asian immigrant/2nd gen males who are smart but they're not getting into the pants of hot white chicks and they're all like "whyyy" and it's because business dudes like chirstian bale in psycho are all--hey, don't fuck with me--but asian-american dudes aren't like that, maybe they need, like inner game. from mystery! the end.
ha thanks took me half way through to realize that wasn't first-person
I think there definitely is bias against Asian-Americans, e.g. in college admissions, where it seems to be pretty well documented. There's also some bias at later career stages, but I can't really describe it properly, it's just a kind of skepticism or not-being-taken-seriously. And no, of course this is not unique to Asians, but it definitely affects Asians.
100: we as minority groups become over-obsessed with things we imagine others thinking about us that are more a product of our relationships with / perceptions of ourselves.
This. You'll not find anyone more critical and yet defensive of Chinese culture than my own parents. There's a lot they admire about America and Americans, but they're also very conscious of being a minority.
Seriously, though, Americans? You need math and science. I'm just sayin'.
FUCK OFF WE INCENTED SLURPEES WITH EVERCLEAR N THEM, ASSHOLE! AND BC WEED! AND SPEAK ENGLISH NEXT TIME MOTHERFUCKER! USA! USA! USA!
Was thinking more of Asian nationals or first-generation immigrants, and especially that a number of the stereotypes (e.g. Koreans) need a much larger dollop of "do not fuck with".
My personal Korean stereotype already includes a fairly massive dose of this, based on
1) mad crazy goose-stepping Korean Stalinists with the world's supply of dug-in artillery
2) tireless South Korean riveters building endless numbers of ridiculously huge modern bulk carriers at tremendous speed
3) Koreans I knew at university who were stocky, unsmiling and purposeful to a positively Oddjob degree
4) Koreans I've met profesionally who are invariably tremendously focused on either work or heavy drinking and
5) a Korean-American army officer I worked with who had the nickname "The Energiser Bunny of Death".
A fellow in Greenwood, Miss. once explained to me that a Yankee is anyone who lives north of Minter City. (He was making a friendly joke. He wanted me to know that, while I was essentially an alien to him, that he put lots of decent-seeming people in that category.)
japanese people are not regarded, by other former members of the co-prosperity sphere, as being particularly self-effacing.
Our protagonist, immediately after complaining that he can't get laid:
I recall one of the strangest conversations I had in the city. A woman came up to me at a party and said she had been moved by a piece of writing I had published. She confessed that prior to reading it, she had never wanted to talk to me, and had always been sure, on the basis of what she could see from across the room, that I was nobody worth talking to, that I was in fact someone to avoid.
But she had been wrong about this, she told me: It was now plain to her that I was a person with great reserves of feeling and insight.
So she's flirting! How does he feel about this? He's insulted:
She did not ask my forgiveness for this brutal misjudgment. Instead, what she wanted to know was--why had I kept that person she had glimpsed in my essay so well hidden? She confessed something of her own hidden sorrow: She had never been beautiful and had decided, early on, that it therefore fell to her to "love the world twice as hard." Why hadn't I done that?
And later:
Having glimpsed just how unacceptable the world judges my demeanor, could I too strive to make up for my shortcomings? Practice a shit-eating grin until it becomes natural? Love the world twice as hard?
So here, finally, is what it comes down to: He feels degraded because he's subjected to treatment that should properly only be aimed at homely chicks.
Also, I hate to second-guess an anecdote, but I have a hard time imagining someone, even drunk, coming up and saying, "I have never wanted to talk to you, and have always been sure, on the basis of what I could see from across the room, that you were nobody worth talking to, that you were in fact someone to avoid."
I can, however, imagine saying, while drunk, "Reading your article really made me want to get to know you. I had seen you around, and you seemed a bit unfriendly." Which, hm, might have nothing to do with being Asian? He sounds... kind of unfriendly? I mean, I'm unfriendly. I accept this about myself.
Also: you can tell he's been paying attention to the pickup artist guy, because the #1 thing pickup artists learn to do is always degrade the looks of the woman talking to you. Before you do anything else, catalog her flaws.
the #1 thing pickup artists learn to do is always degrade the looks of the woman talking to you. Before you do anything else, catalog her flaws.
Sounds somewhat like what the woman in the anecdote was doing: "[she said she] had always been sure, on the basis of what she could see from across the room, that I was nobody worth talking to, that I was in fact someone to avoid".
Before you do anything else, catalog her flaws.
"If I said you had an adequate body would you hold it against me?"
I actually rather liked the article, in part because of the way he describes what it feels like (possibly not the point of his article) to turn everything into a dominance/submission scenario. You're either humiliating someone or they're humiliating you. And that's a very US-masculinity thing. Am I better-looking than that guy? Am I more manly or less manly? How many women are attracted to me? How do they rate? I know! In stead of trying to succeed I'll just throw myself to the bottom of a well and scream "Is everyone happy now that I've FAILED?"
This is why I couldn't get laid in college. I thought the whole idea of going to a nerdy school full of boys would be nice, and all of us would finally get to experiment sexually with people like ourselves. But oh my God, the bitterness and rage inside those boys... In any little grouping of them, there would be two or three who desperately competed to be Vince Vaughn in Swingers and the rest who went into omega-male mode. I'm not sure they noticed that they went to college with women, except that women were there to be made fun of for wanting to have sex or date.
I'll reiterate my above theory that this guy is talking about Nerd Problems, not Asian-American Problems. Outside the highest-achieving tip of the US, where everyone is bitter and clannish, there is such a thing as enjoying your life, being funny and attractive without rolling a stone up a hill all day.
I'll reiterate my above theory that this guy is talking about Nerd Problems, not Asian-American Problems.
Yeah, really. He keeps saying that his Nerd Problems are so much worse because people can tell just by looking at his physiognomy that he's a nerd. And then scowls at all the other Asian guys who are not in any way nerds.
I do think Nerd Problems are a real thing--I've got them, too--but probably the biggest Nerd Problem is trying to figure out what it is about you that lets other people know you're a nerd, so you get paranoid that it's your race, weight, hair, body type, gender performance, whatever. But that doesn't ever make sense because there are other people who look and act like you who are not Nerds.
I heard a lot of similar things from a guy I dated who, every time he said something nerdy or weird, would say comment on his being Jewish. I kept wanting to say, Honey, I've known a lot of Jews; you're just special.
Some people think it's a Nerds Problem if you jostle the box too much and mix the flavors, but, really, it's all mostly sugar. Now, it is a problem if you eat too many of any flavor, as your tongue will feel all burny.
175.2: I think it's unarguable that the only reason none of us got laid in college more is that there was something deeply psychologically wrong with every single member of the opposite sex (or indeed the same sex, depending).
181: I do think Nerd Problems affect men disproportionately. They certainly affected most of the women I knew, too, in one way or another--it was that kind of school. There were some guys who weren't busy wrestling with their fear/desire of masculinity, but many of them were in the Christian youth cult. I met some very nice people doing theater.
It doesn't, however, seem unfair to me to say that men in competitive schools can be the sort who were pushed to Be The Best and to deal with resentment of girls by Being The Best at them. I have talked to some of those guys after college, and it's really interesting how much nicer they are now, and better at listening.
...and, obviously, as someone who has Nerd Problems, I have made a science of observing how such things (paranoia, anxiety, competitiveness, self-destructive perversity, resentment) in others prevent me from getting what I want. If there is a nerd around, I get a tingly feeling in my antennae.
AWB is of course 100% correct about the Nerd Problems thing and its applicability to the article.
If you havin' Nerd Problems I'll be there for ya hon / Got 99 problems and a Nerd ain't one, hit me...
Computer nerds have 99 problems, but a glitch ain't one.
Barack has 99 problems, but Gingrich ain't one.
I'll reiterate my above theory that this guy is talking about Nerd Problems, not Asian-American Problems. Outside the highest-achieving tip of the US, where everyone is bitter and clannish, there is such a thing as enjoying your life, being funny and attractive without rolling a stone up a hill all day.
(emphasis mine)
That's an interesting description, and I can't decide whether it rings slightly false to me, or if it just describes something outside of my experience. It's certainly evocative of many moods that I remember well.
I've said before, my personality is about as geeky as anybody, and I have plenty of experience with feeling either excluded or uncomfortable because of that. But I also feel like neither me, nor my geek friends express much of the anger and bitterness which is often attributed to geeks in discussions on unfogged.
I believe that there are many people who fit the stereotype of the bitter overly-competitive geek, but it always makes me wonder what the additional factors involved in that are since clearly just being a geek isn't enough. Perhaps feeling a great deal of pressure for conventional social success is that element, certainly most of the geeks I know wouldn't fit that description.
I don't mean to completely distance myself from the description; certainly I am, "much better at listening" now than I was in college, and I know for a fact that I came across as tiresome and boorish at least occasionally in college. But I don't think people would have described me as not being a nice person. *shrug* It is, of course, difficult to know for sure.
James Woolsey had 99 problems, Aldrich Ames just one.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has 99 problems, but Milosevic ain't one.
||
Syria's got 99 problems, but Amina ain't one.
Christ, what an asshole.
|>
187: Nick, if it doesn't describe you it doesn't describe you. Nobody is saying it describes every geek. Why do we have to go through this every time the subject comes up?
I can't prove that I thought this, but I heard of Gay Girl In Damascus for the first time just a few weeks ago -- someone linked a post about her father being heroically supportive in the face of the secret police or something. And I was wondering if it was bullshit instantly; the story was too perfect-wish-fulfillment.
Much like "Three Cups of Tea", I never knew "Gay Girl In Damascus" as an un-debunked entity.
I'm a little wary of the rush to assimilate Asian-American issues (especially for men) with "nerd" issues. You have to basically be Conan the Asian Fucking Barbarian in much of the USA (not so much here) to have people avoid putting a whole set of undue stereotypes on you, and it's a little churlish to just dismiss the culture-specific issues as nerd ones. But then I like Asians and hate nerd culture.
The article did set that conflation up -- I think there might have been a more interesting article on Asian-American assimilation issues that could have been produced by editing out, e.g., the bits about learning 'The Game' for dating.
Asian-Americans have 99 problems and they can catalog each one in such detail that it makes it difficult to get at the larger issues.
They're overachievers like that.
194: I may be biased because I live, work, and teach in an environment with a very high percentage of Asian immigrants, and outside the fancy schools, so the specific stereotypes about "the Asian kid who's amazing at math and sucks with girls" don't really get invoked. If you were that amazing at math, you wouldn't be at my college. Chinese and Korean hipster-lotharios abound.
194: It is wrong to assmiliate Asian-American issues with nerd issues. Which is why the article shouldn't be doing it, but it is.
Nobody is saying it describes every geek. Why do we have to go through this every time the subject comes up?
Eh, nobody needs to indulge me but I will continue having my reaction which is (a) the description is close enough to my experience to be recognizable but (b) doesn't describe me or anybody that I've spent much time with.
I think it's understandable why I would have the reaction of, "How widespread is this?" Out of curiosity if nothing else.
(Of course my experience is Great White North inflected, but the big "Asian issue" in Western Canadian cities with substantial Asian minorities isn't that people disproportionately think of Asians as passive nerds, although everybody can recognize and laugh at a joke about Asians and libraries. It's really that they disproportionately think of them as gangsters and troublemakers. Post- the year 2000, there were still politicians in Western Canada using Yellow Peril rhetoric in elections.)
201: My favorite Western Canada ethnic stereotype is that Sikhs are extremely frightening truck drivers.
201: I wonder whether that's more Canadian, or more West Coast. I have an entirely different set of Asian American stereotypes depending on which coast they're from -- someone from the East Coast I tend to assume that the strong odds are that they're first generation in the US, and I recognize the geeky/academic stereotype. Someone from California or anywhere else out west, I don't make assumptions about when their family immigrated or how culturally assimilated they are, and I don't anticipate the geeky/academic thing in the same way.
But I'm drifting uncomfortably close to talking about stereotypes in my head as if they were demographic facts about the Asian American experience, so I should stop.
The model minority stereotype seems dated to me, but as Halford says, it's still around. That is, I haven't met many people who conform to it, but I've met people who hold it. I think this is more the case for older people (and as NPH says, it's more of a mainland thing as well), and by older I just mean mid-to-late 30s and older. I don't think second-generation in the context of this article means literally just "parents immigrated" but rather the generation whose parents were in the first post-1965 wave of immigration.
Beyond that, I suspect the dynamic nature of immigration is and has been messing up the old stereotypes for a while. I'm primarily thinking of Taiwan here, but most of the countries people are coming from are a whole lot more business-oriented than they were a few decades ago and it would be hard to believe that that wouldn't change the meaning of the "traditional" culture thing that people are assuming Asian immigrants are growing up with.
Another thing to put in the mix with current immigrants is that it seems more viable to immigrate in the migrate sense to the US for a while and then possibly go to Asia, at least if you're at a certain level of class and wealth. The US isn't the only place with opportunities.
201: Or, closer to this discussion, there was that whole Mclean's "Too Asian" article on elite colleges mess last year.
195, 200 -- that's right.
I grew up in a neighborhood that would be a major Korean city if it were broken out separately from LA.
As soon as I see a white dude carrying around a pencil case I will consider giving up my nerdy asian stereotypes.
209: I had a white-dude colleague who walked around carrying a pencil case. (He may still, for all I know.) But I think it was a gift from his Chinese SO.
You screwed up the numbers so we're going to demote you to white guy.
More seriously, I'm thinking that CMU doesn't count as far as nerd counterexamples.
Geeks have pencil necks, not pencil cases, so once again, people are conflating stereotypes.
210: Fortunately, I pass for white, so I can submerge my shame among the anonymous pink and pasty masses.
211: The guy in question is indeed a nerd among nerds, yes.
I can submerge my shame among the anonymous pink
...laydeez.
As soon as I see a white dude carrying around a pencil case I will consider giving up my nerdy asian stereotypes.
They were de facto mandatory for everyone when I was growing up.
For what it's worth, I have spoken to the author at a party. I believe it is worth very little. It was a good conversation, about writing and ideas and stuff!
In fact, I opened, like the woman in the story, with praise for an article of his that I had read. However, we'd never met before, so I didn't have the chance to give him a prior impression of unfuckability.
I can't quite get past the statistics he cites in the first few pages of the article on the discrepancy between a relatively high Asian-American representation in various endeavors, and the eventual low representation in the upper ranks of the associated professions. There's surely something going on there.
That the article continues with a fair amount of meandering is a separate issue. It invites the sense that this a case of Nerd Problems, but that's not enough to dismiss the introductory complaint altogether.
219.1: Why, yes. Racism. It's not that shocking, surely. (I mean, maybe it ought to be, but it isn't.)
I don't understand 43, by the way. Slacktivist's reading of the Old Testament is not really that contentious or unorthodox.
214: I have been hoping to achieve something like this for years, and can now die content.
216: As well you should.
221: I remember going to a seder at a friend's house in college, where his family fell to arguing over whether to take "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt" in the nice liberal way Slacktivist suggests, or instead with the implied adendum "and I can send you back there any time I choose".
219, 220: Of course there's racism, but I also wonder about the age distribution. To really get at the intensity of the disadvantage, you don't (I think) want to compare the current fraction of managers who are Asian to the current fraction of engineers, because of the time it takes for people to rise to become managers. Look at the ratio of (Asian managers now)/(Asian engineers n years ago) to (all managers now)/(all engineers n years ago). --- Actually if I could get data this might make a good assignment for my class. Thank you, Unfogged and Wesley Yang!
I also wonder about the age distribution.
It's certainly a point that's worth checking into, but my guess is that if you get data to look at, it won't explain the discrepancy. I'm firmly mid-career, and I don't think of high proportions of Asians in technical careers as something that was new when I was starting out.
221: slacktivist doesn't seem to notice that the God portrayed in the Old Testament is not a tolerant liberal. In fact, this God quite explicitly advocates genocide.
225: And then gets all stroppy when they go and commit it. JHVH just gets bitchy sometimes, that's all.
Is the link in 225 working for others? I'd to read it because I've a problem with some Amelaks, and I would like guidance.
Now it's working! I didn't find it very convincing, but I'm also extremely ignorant about such matters.
I don't find it very convincing either, though interesting as an exercise in historical lit. crit. But I linked it in response to Peep's assertion that Clark doesn't notice that the God of at least the early Old Testament is a genocidal lunatic. He does notice. He addresses the issue. He's not going to convince me because I don't believe in the existence of JHWH, but you can't say he ignores the problem for his own belief system.
225, 231: You're right -- I had forgotten about those slacktivist posts.
190, 192, 193: If I thought a little more before I asked, I could probably come up with my own answer, but my reaction to Gay Girl in Damascus is "Eh. What's the harm?" So what if the author is a straight married dude. He didn't have any malice and the persona made some people care about Syria. What should I care about here?
The Syria he's making people care about is a fantasy? I don't know enough about Syria, or about his blog, to know how accurate he was. But he tripped my bullshit detector on the only post I ever read, so I'm guessing he was pretty imperfectly accurate. And so people think they're learning about conditions for gay women in Syria, but they're not.
I don't want to argue myself into strongly holding a position, since I mostly don't. But I'd guess that the false Syria he created is slightly more accurate than most people's vague fuzzy impression of Syria. Not strictly accurate, but incrementally better than "hmmm. Maybe Syria is over towards, um, the Middle East. Or Africa or something." I guess I'm thinking that most folks could say as little about Syria as I could, and if a fictional voice gave them any reason to learn more and wasn't talking about riding dinosaurs in the streets, it was a plus. Or at least not a minus.
That might be true, and certainly gets truer the more accurate he was. Other than that, I think it's more offensive than harmful -- non-Western lesbians and similar 'outsiders' get little enough public attention that it's kind of galling that the small amount of attention that people are willing to pay turns out to have been going to yet another white guy. Or, to put it another way, if he was shouldering an actual woman of color trying to express her experiences out of the limited amount of attention available, that's a genuine harm.
The world is large, so maybe people act in ways I don't expect. That's been true and distressing for me before. But I don't think of people looking around for a specific niche of bloggers. (Although I do for water and read even the boring ones, so I can immediately contradict my own argument.) Seems to me that people are looking for a charming voice. If it happens to belong to a Syrian lesbian, they'll read that and feel smug for being an insider during the Arab uprising. But if they didn't find a charming voice, they wouldn't be reading Syrian lesbian blogs at all.
I'd also say that if he can write a charming blog as someone else, he could do it as himself. Charming blog voice is the rare attribute here, not insider knowledge about Syria.
A better way to say my last sentence:
People allocated attention to the blog because of charming blog voice. A Syrian lesbian blog without the charm wouldn't get the attention. A Scottish white dude with the charm would. Under this theory, he isn't costing actual women of color eyeballs, because it is the charm that calls readers.
And that's not impossible either -- I'm not dead sure that there is much harm, I'm just throwing out the possibilities that occur to me.
Yeah, I'm not sure there isn't harm. But I'm not intuitively mad at the guy, nor understanding why others are.
I don't know if there was harm or not, but it is kind of an asshole thing to do.
Oh, I get why people were mad at the guy, he lied to them and tricked them and made them feel stupid. "You nimrods actually believed I was a Syrian lesbian?" while I'm sure it's not what the writer intended, is a hard message to avoid taking away from the experience if you were a fan of the blog.
My own attempt at pretending to be an Uzbek transexual ended in tears for everyone involved.
When does it become an asshole thing to do? When other people get invested in the character?
When does it become an asshole thing to do? When other people get invested in the character?
One provisional attempt at an answer.
I suggested that maybe we cross the line when a character asks readers to do something they wouldn't do if they knew the character was a creation rather than a real person, whether it's sending pictures or asking for help springing them from a Syrian prison.
Maybe when people believe the writer isn't lying to them about everything?
When you're lying about who you are in any context in which your identity is even remotely important to what you're saying? I post a fair amount here about lawyering, and about having kids. If I were a childless psychologist who was just claiming to be a lawyer with kids, I'd think people would be justified in thinking I was an asshole regardless of whether it makes any real difference to them.
I would argue that pretended to be persecuted or endangered to make your story more interesting or get attention is an asshole thing from the start. That nobody was actually, specifically hurt doesn't matter. Everybody in the future who needs to attract attention to an actual problem has a potentially harder task. I suppose you could make a case that in some situations, you can't get attention to a problem without some kind of fraud, but Syria is on a lot of radar screens.
But if they didn't find a charming voice, they wouldn't be reading Syrian lesbian blogs at all.
Well, they never were in the first place, if they just read that guy's blog.
That's a good demarcation, NickS.
But so what, CN and LB? If you're giving good advice and accurate in your lawyering and kid tales, who cares if you're a short-order cook? There's the problem that you aren't likely to be 100% right about the annoyance of judges granting delays to crazy people if you don't have the experience, but if you get the persona largely right, it stands or falls on how good it is, not whether it is you.
I am clearly a person who would buy an art forgery or a print. No class.
A print is completely different than a forgery and that distinction is very important for this topic.
I'd buy a known forgery. Similarly, I read fiction. Good to know what I'm getting before I put in the time, though.
I threw in print because I seem to remember the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance objecting to them. I don't myself hold strong opinions on buying prints.
If you're giving good advice and accurate in your lawyering and kid tales, who cares if you're a short-order cook?
I think your question implies that parenting and lawyering are so obviously straightforward or easy that such a situation is likely. That attitude is one of the reasons I always say, "Why bother looking at the specs?" whenever I talk to engineers.
224: Yeah, basically he's arguing that El Shaddai prescribes hospitality to the outsider as a major part of his belief system. This isn't the same as being a tolerant liberal, but it's not an insupportable argument about the emergent point of the scriptures; ethics of hospitality to the stranger and ethics of total warfare against the stranger can be compatible, if illiberal and in some ways horrifying, depending on the circumstances.
He's right about the importance of the hospitality principle AFAICS. The sin for which Sodom and Gomorrah were blasted off the map wasn't just buttsecks; it was the violent ill-use of travelers. Lot is spared in part because he sacrifices members of his own family to save strangers from assault.
234: my reaction to Gay Girl in Damascus is "Eh. What's the harm?"
The harm is, he eventually used the blog to twit Syria's brutal despotic regime in the midst of a political crisis, thereby putting real people in greater danger. He was also an asshole for appropriating an identity unnecessarily and writing as fact what he should have written as a novel, but that's minor by comparison.
But if you're rewarded with whatever experience and learning you were hoping for and find out in retrospect it wasn't true, although not substantially wrong, are you mad about it?
I'm thinking of Dan Savage's chill attitude towards fake letters. This one might not be a real letter, but it describes a situation that someone could be in. Close enough.
If you're just running to the Safeway, I'm going to be upset.
If I were a childless psychologist who was just claiming to be a lawyer with kids, I'd think people would be justified in thinking I was an asshole regardless of whether it makes any real difference to them.
I think that's true.
If you wanted to fit that into Alyssa's criteria you could say that unfogged offers a space in which people are relatively safe to share personal details of their life (with all of the appropriate "it's the internet" caveats). I would say that the tone at unfogged "asks" people to be honest in their self-presentation and that they front page posters do quite a bit to set that tone.
That feels like a bit of a stretch, but I don't know if it's unreasonable.
This all worked out so well in Meet John Doe.
There's the problem that you aren't likely to be 100% right about the annoyance of judges granting delays to crazy people if you don't have the experience, but if you get the persona largely right, it stands or falls on how good it is, not whether it is you.
The problem I see is that the author of the posts is a liar -- they want to be read badly enough to say untrue things to get readers. At that point, anyone who treats them as a source of information on any topic is being a chump -- the writer may be including truthful information in their writings, but only accidentally, rather than as a rule of decision. That is, most of us, I hope, post generally using the rule that everything we say will be true and will attempt to be interesting; someone with a false persona is not using the first rule.
That's harder-line than I mean it to be -- I don't really see much of a problem with misrepresentations about your personal status if that's not what you're talking about. Someone who gives themselves an online gender change doesn't bother me unless they're blogging about their personal life, and so on. And it's not impossible for a writer to try to be truthful in the fictional persona they're presenting -- I'm just very sympathetic to anyone who doesn't trust that to be the case.
To keep on dithering about this, the problem with saying that it's all right so long as the persona is accurate, is that if there's anything at all interesting about the persona, the reader can't check it for accuracy. The only reason to be interested in other people is that they aren't you -- they know things you don't, and are things that you aren't. Anyone that you could learn anything new from, you can't be sure that what you're learning is real unless you trust them.
I think I heard recently "Everyone wants to catch memoirists making it all up, and fiction writers importing their actual life."
It was said as "What a catch-22 we writers are placed in!" but in fact it seems totally reasonable to me that you get criticized for not staying in the genre you claim you're in.
241
Yeah, I'm not sure there isn't harm. But I'm not intuitively mad at the guy, nor understanding why others are.
It's like parking in the handicapped space when you aren't handicapped.
223
It's certainly a point that's worth checking into, but my guess is that if you get data to look at, it won't explain the discrepancy. I'm firmly mid-career, and I don't think of high proportions of Asians in technical careers as something that was new when I was starting out.
There is also the assumption that the best workers make the best managers which is questionable. For example I don't see why people think NFL head coaches should be drawn from the same population as NFL players.
You're probably banned for using an analogy, but that captures my reaction exactly.
268 > 266. 267 is right as well but you're going to have to learn to curb this analogising.
266: And that is wrong even if no one handicapped wants the spot at that particular moment.
I feel that someone should mention the categorical imperative at this point, but I'm reluctant to do so because if everyone did it, the comments would be very repetitive.
I read a lot of adoption blogs and in several of them it's clear that the writers are bending the truth a bit in pursuit of a good story. Of course we all choose what we want to present and how to do it, but there's something obviously writerly about some people's blogs that bothers me, but I'm trying to decide whether it's more on stylistic or moral terms. I think I just don't like that they're trying to get someone to offer them book deals, so that's probably a personal problem on my part.
Asian? You mean like Israeli? Kurdish maybe?
270: If polygamy were wrong, you should never marry any particular person, because if everyone did it, then you'd all be married to the same person.
I only ate one seven-billionth of my lunch today, because if all seven billion people ate more than that much, I'd have negative lunch!