Respond to: The impact of stereotyping on Asian American students.
“Asian American students also have been found to go to great lengths to downplay physical traits that are associated with being Asian.”
One Asian American girl says in this chapter that in order to be more Americanized, she chooses to change her hair color and also to get colored contact lenses. Which strikes me a lot!I couldn’t help but wonder how desperate and inferior one feels in his/her living environment could trigger him/her wanting eagerly to look like another ethnicity. Could such a big damage be solely caused by stereotyping?
We all know that stereotyping exists in every society. When I just moved to Hong Kong from China more than 20 years ago, mainland Chinese was considered inferior. And our accents of speaking Cantonese was being mocked too. All these disadvantages didn’t hinder me from being what I want to be, since I possessed what made me proud of, my supportive family, my considerate friends, and my interests. Without a doubt, stereotyping could influence emotional and self-identity development to a certain extent, which is particular true to adolescents. As this chapter has suggested, including multicultural curriculum in school could ease the tension a lot. In addition to that, I think that the school curriculum emphasizing whole-person development is vital too. We should take advantage of adolescents’ developmental characteristics to help them develop into capable citizens, who are able to judge critically and independently, know who they are, know what they want to be, know their places in the world, know their responsibilities, and know how to function to benefit others and themselves. With such an awareness, stereotyping is just a joke to them!
It is truly sad how people (especially young girls!) will go so far to emulate the appearance of the dominant culture. I believe a large part of that comes from the way that the majority of actresses, singers, and models these girls see in the media are Euro-American, thin, blue-eyed, etc. I have heard many African American celebrity women discuss their insecurity of having a “black figure” in Hollywood. For this reason, I love seeing women like Nicki Minaj, Tyra Banks, and Beyonce celebrating their curves and encouraging positive body image.
As a teacher, I have had many students make comments about my blue eyes and express envy. I even saw some of them wear blue contacts. I always reacted strongly to the girls who fawned over my eye color, firmly asserting that there was nothing special about blue eyes and that their own eyes were perfectly gorgeous. I hate that these girls have absorbed the belief that only blue eyes are beautiful because that means they see their eyes, and maybe themselves, as inferior because of their inability to reflect the dominant images in the media.
Sze, I really like your suggestion of adding whole person development in addition to multicultural curriculum in order to fight the devastating effects of stereotyping. I do think both are necessary in order to combat stereotyping because, as the article notes, by excluding stories of Asian Americans and other minorities in subjects such as history and literature while focusing on those of European Americans, stereotypes are being enforced and regardless of what they are taught, the message they will get is that they are not important as other people are in this society. I especially like your assertion that it is essential that we help students think critically and independently in order to become capable contributing citizens who benefit themselves and others. As teachers we are in a very unique position to fight these injustices.