Wesley Yang's recent essay, "Paper Tigers," was published as the cover story of New York Magazine yesterday. Have you read it yet? I just did, and my head is reeling. Much like Manny Pacquiao delivering blow after blow in the ring, Wesley Yang overloads the senses with vivid imagery, damning statistics, compelling interviews and profiles, and the occasional "fuck you" thrown in for good measure. It is a long article, and I write short blog posts, so I'm only going to talk about a couple points here, but please bring up other points of discussion in the comments if you wish.
Okay, first assertion by the author I wish to talk about: Asian Americans, although we have fantastic college acceptance and graduation rates, meet a "Bamboo Ceiling" in the corporate world, evidenced by some anecdotes and the fact that only 1.8% of Fortune 500 companies have Asian CEOs. Therefore, all the math drills and cram schools we force our kids to attend do not guarantee success in life after school.
First off, I agree that this Bamboo Ceiling phenomenon exists; I just don't think the statistics he has chosen to use even begin to prove his point. If we go by the Fortune 500 measure, everyone in America besides these 500 CEOs hasn't succeeded, and I'm sure many of them beg to differ. And I'm not talking from the "money doesn't guarantee happiness" point of view either...fine, you want to judge success by Benjamins, I can talk Benjamins.
How about the thousands of Asian Americans who can say: "I may not have made $37 million dollars last year as CEO of PepsiCo (ironically CEOed by a woman of South Asian descent), but as a boring-ass middle-tier lawyer I did make $300,000." I dunno about you, but that still seems like success to me. And don't forget all the Asian Americans who knowingly opt out of the rat race either by becoming public servants, activists, artists and designers, church leaders (I wonder what the combined net worth of all the Korean churches in America is...I bet it's not too shabby), and self-employed.
It's tough to become a Fortune 500 CEO, or any kind of CEO that necessitates moving up the corporate ladder. The reason why so many of them are tall white men is because their predecessors were tall white men. The Old Boy Network has been around for what, 12 generations now, and that club is hard to get into, and it usually involves multiple generations of inherited money, power, and connections to people like governors and board members, so they're not bound to look kindly on some fresh-faced 2nd generation ethnic-American whose family's net worth cannot buy a congressional district. I think it's amazing that even 9 Asian Americans managed to pierce through that veil. Go them!
Which brings me to my second point: you think Asian Americans have it bad? Talk to a Latino or African American. Their "success" numbers drop off in high school, let alone college. Or how about women of all races? Injustice comes in many flavors.
My second cause of dismay was the uncomfortably long portion dedicated to learning pick up artist tricks in order to bone white girls. After all this compelling talk about real Asian American issues, with no segue at all, suddenly I'm thrust into a world I don't think I'm meant to witness with a motley crew of alpha-males-in-training. Their mission statement: "What is good in life?" “To crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women—in my bed!”
Work and life success equated with contrived sexual conquests? Really? Who invited me to the sausage fest?
However, this bombastic tone screeches to a halt near the end when he starts talking about Amy Chua's Tiger Mom book. In fact, his review is the most nuanced and intriguing I've read on the topic, and it actually made me want to finally read the book. Which brings me to my final reaction: despite the gut-wrenching, angry ways he describes his own and the world's shortcomings, Wesley Yang strikes me a pinnacle of his definition of success. He has a semi-naked picture of himself published in his barely-edited cover story for New York Magazine, for goodness' sake! And dare I say, despite his first few paragraphs, he accomplished this as an Asian American.
PS: While I was writing this, Ask a Korean's response came into my feed reader. It's some good shit.
--Julie
