White privilege for Asian Americans?

Just today I came across this article on white privilege being afforded to Asian Americans.

I thought that this article compares well with what we talked about in class last week concerning as privilege being binary and privilege being problematic for those in the privileged group (as argued by McIntosh from the class readings). With concern to race, the binary seems to go ‘you’re white and you have privilege or you’re black and you don’t.’ However, reading this article and discussing it with a close friend of mine really sort of adjusted my thinking of white privilege and clarified the problems that it creates.

I knew that race and privilege are topics of interest to close friend of mine, so I sent the article to her and we had a short conversation. She provided some really valuable insight from her own experiences being Japanese-American. She so kindly gave me permission to quote her (Thanks again, girl).

As for the article, the main gist that the author is getting at is that Asian-Americans are quite often afforded the same privileges as white Americans, thus becoming a part of white privilege as it is, and not changing it. She makes the argument at the end that white privilege should be challenged by anyone who has it and isn’t white.

This article seems limited however in that it only talks about tech jobs and university admissions. So statistically, Asian Americans are well represented in Silicon Valley, but we don’t quite have the big picture of Asian American experience and representation in the larger workforce. This was something that my friend took issue with. Stereotypically, Asian Americans are seen as holding jobs in high tech industries or in the medical field, and this is also the assumption that this author seems to explore in her article. But what about those who are not working jobs in technology or medicine? This is where I think the white privilege of Asian Americans conversation gets weak. Here is a quote from my friend:

“There have been a number of times where people have asked me at work if I’m also a pre-med student or studying to become a doctor.”

She has a BFA in painting, and is currently in New Orleans doing art but supporting herself financially with a job in retail. She does not aspire to work in Silicon Valley or become a doctor. She is an artist and what she does for income is for just income, not for status. There is no indicator other than her race and her age that would suggest to these inquiring customers that she might be a future doctor. She does not have medical textbooks stacked behind the register or a “Tulane School of Medicine” sweatshirt. But to these customers she otherwise would seem out of place with her retail job being her main source of income. Contrary to white privilege, her race has set expectations and boundaries for her by others.

Here’s a related quote from the conversation with my friend on the topic of expectations and boundaries:

She went on to express frustration about that good old concept of “having it all” as a woman, and how ‘career’ is a part of that ideal in popular media. In addition, from the article and her experience, ‘career’ is something that is presumed to be a priority for Asian Americans. So, what if it isn’t?

In conclusion, even though Asian Americans may experience white privilege in seeking a professional career in tech or medicine and college admissions, there are plenty of reasons why ‘white privilege’ of an Asian American is still not the same as a white person’s white privilege. Mainly, this is because of the issue of race. Asian-American experience cannot be assimilated into white privilege because they’re not white. And that’s one of the problems with white privilege. It’s exclusive and it maintains a hierarchy thus creating oppression in one way or another for those who are explicitly ‘not white.’  Just because one may enjoy privilege in the workplace doesn’t necessarily mean that they will enjoy that privilege on the street or community at large. Socially constructed presumptions about a race and history itself are still important in contemporary American culture. McIntosh from last week’s reading said it well that her whiteness “protects her from many kinds of hostility, stress, and violence” (p. 90). I have not yet seen the case for Asian Americans enjoying the same protection.

So like McIntosh from the reading last week, the author of this article calls out the damage that privilege creates for those on either side, and in general for rejecting white privilege when possible. From this and from conversing with my friend, I really understand the urgency for this even more.