If 9 out of 10 Asian-American students in America are jealous of their Caucasian friends, hate their parents, and/or achieve relatively high grades against or mostly against their own will, it’s not a racist assumption, not a “stereotype” -

It’s a widespread issue.

Let’s think historical context. The very foundation upon which the Chinese family operates is Confucianism. It has been rooted deeply into the Chinese heritage beginning all the way back when the old man was still walking. And Confucianism states really only one thing – respect your elders. Filial piety. Thus comes the beloved “Spanking is caring, scolding is loving” yak.

And let’s face it; after Mao came along and rolled over little babies with tanks, life wasn’t easy for the Chinese. Life became very competitive with the soaring population and limited resources.

I am a first-generation Asian-American, and my parents were born in the 60s – a time of intense rationing, arbitrary imprisonment/execution, and submission to the Red Guards carrying clubs and rifles. Their hope? To escape the regime and work their way to Candyland. Which happens to be in America.

And so I came along. Now, I am more than fortunate to be in the 10% of Asian-Americans who have parents that let me go out for dinner with a possey and come back at 1 in the morning.

But unfortunately, for my friends and peers, that’s not always the case. There are those Asian couples who came to the US carrying those beliefs, principles, and ways of life with them across the thousands of miles and miles of ocean.

They’re down and depressed, upset with their life, their appearance, and worse yet, they’re jealous of me and their Caucasian peers. It sickens me.

I have a Japanese friend in college, a very prestigious one at that. I won’t mention the name for her own sake, but she is indicative of prime Asian success – sky-high GPA, advanced music studies, had incredible intern offers overseas in the marketing field. Sweet girl she was, seemed good-natured. She did, however, lack friends and endured over ten years of academic pressure from her parents.

Until one day, details not specified, she missed a chance for job by failing a test just marginally.

That night she popped sleeping pills.

A lot of sleeping pills.

Her liver (or was it kidney) failed and she was on the brink of death until she got lucky and found a donor for a transplant.

She lived. Not long after her recovery did her angry mother burst into the hospital and slap her across the cheek using the exact words in English, “You dishonor our family.” Not a tear, not a whimp, not a motherly sob. Just fury and violence. 

Of course, the father didn’t show up because he was so embarassed.

Sure, maybe her story remains an outlier of society, something that rarely occurs. But think about all the little, stereotypical details of her story that made what happened happen. Or consider why it happened. Did she overreact to a job rejection? Or was she not able to handle the stress of having FAILED, not able to handle the “dishonor” she plastered on her family name?

More importantly is the point that that the traditional Asian values simply do not work in American society. Americans will not tolerate slapping a suicidal child on their would-have-been deathbed, and they will not tolerate forcing children into a black hole of isolation lacking that social side of life that could just one day save your soul. I, Me, Myself, the first-generation Asian-American will not tolerate that. I have Asian-American family friends that I knew when I was 6 or 7 whom my parents no longer associate with because the way in which they raise their children disgusts them.

Individuals mature through their morals and sociability, society matures through its culture and traditions. And by forcing their children to submit to their overbearing regime they are passing on everything that they escaped from, the biggest of hypocrites, rationing not grains, but fun, love, and sociability. Hours and hours of strenuous work on the collectives have become hours and hours of flipping through “The Princeton Review – Cracking the SAT”. They are using immature culture and traditions to limit the moral and social maturation of their own children. They are blinded by the glamour of a brand-name university, blinded by its false promise of eternal happiness and success, not even bothering to see the price tag of years of mental health and happiness.

It’s not impossible to be Asian-American, earn high grades, play competition-level piano, violin, and guitar, be a computer geek, AND maintain a level of sociability not inferior to those all around you. I can do it, my friends can do it, and so can anyone else. So long as you are self motivated and want to do well because you can, love music and the arts, love technology and gadgetry, and still love being able to have fun all at once, etc etc, you will be successful.

I am utterly ashamed of having to write this about my own race. Yet it is undoubtedly a plague which cannot be ignored any longer.

It isn’t really just about the financial side of things as someone has commented above. It is really about whether parents see their children as real people. Even today my father continues to try to control my life, resorting to cheap emotional blackmail if he doesn’t get his way. And he is convinced that he is doing it because he loves me, but he doesn’t. How could he love me when he never bothered to find out who I was?

Sometimes I feel guilty that I don’t love him. It took a long time for me to admit that to myself. After all, he did raise me. I suppose I am grateful for that. But gratitude is not the same as love.

I think in some cultures parents are simply too disconnected from their children. Perhaps most cultures were like that in the past, but some of them changed. It is just that Western culture has changed much faster than Asian cultures.