I must admit that I learned about the criticism of the "Too Asian?" article in Maclean's before I actually read it. I received emails asking me to write letters of protest to universities that were warning of an "Asian invasion," help with community outreach, and was later invited to two "Youth Coalition Against Maclean's ‘Too Asian'" meeting in Toronto and Waterloo. The Chinese Canadian National Council also condemned the article for fostering an "us versus them" mentality. In other words, when I finally sat down to read the article I was ready to read about how university administrators trapped under an avalanche of Asian enrollment were asking governments for help, or, at the very least, interviews with professors and students stating that white students, all things being equal, were being given preferential treatment over Asian students because the universities were already too Asian. I was primed to be enraged.
After reading the article, I suspected that many of the critics had not bothered to read past the title before concluding that Maclean's was engaging in moral panic, fear mongering, irresponsible journalism and racism. The article, in essence, tackles two main issues. First, white students, who apparently want to party as much as they want to study don't go to certain universities because they are too much of a "study school." These white students, the article concludes through interviews, do not want to compete with studious Asian students, and want to party at university, so they choose other schools. This first argument, if one wants to venture into racial territory, is likely more, or just as, racist towards white students as Asian ones. The article states plainly that Asian students tend to be "high achievers" and states that white students care more about "social interaction" and "alcohol."
Second, the article points out that campus life is becoming too skewed in one direction -- the social or the academic. It is true that these camps are often highly racialized. But, pointing out that white students spend as much time partying as they do studying, while Asian students tend not to party with white students is, again, not racist. Research does support the argument that minority students in general are more academically studious. As sociologists have pointed out for years, this does create a facile multiculturalism in which student of different backgrounds attend the same university, but rarely talk to one another. University administrators may be spending time, as the article suggests, worrying about how they can get everybody to "hang out" with each other, but that is their prerogative. Racism it is not.
The Maclean's article also notes that the impact of high admissions rates for Asian students has created much controversy in the United States. As the article points out, some studies support the idea that "Ivy League schools have taken the issue of Asian academic prowess so seriously that they've operated with secret quotas for decades to maintain their WASP credentials." If similar secret quotas were being implemented in Canada, then that would indeed be despicable. At that point, we should be organizing Youth Coalition meetings, letter-writing campaigns, and protests. An article in a major Canadian magazine simply pointing out certain trends in our society need not be accused of racism and fear mongering.
The Youth Coalition meeting to which I was invited states that "we need to mobilize a Youth Coalition to form a unified stance against the article's attempt to instill a panic of an ‘Asian Invasion' of universities, reinforce racial stereotypes and irresponsible journalism." It does not seem to matter much that the words "Asian invasion" do not appear even once in the Maclean's article, nor is the overall tone of the article suggesting anything of the sort. In accusing Maclean's of fear mongering, critics have begun to do the same. Based on interviews with Chinese, Korean, and Japanese students in several Canadian universities, the article only attempted to explore some of the sociological trends that these communities are undergoing.
I suspect that if the article was entitled "Asian students working hard at Canadian universities" instead of "‘Too Asian'?" it would not have incited much controversy. This is not to say that students from minority populations do not experience challenges, racism or otherwise, at universities. In fact, this is precisely my point. There are enough real issues that should be occupying the time of anti-racism campaigners. They do not need to invent new ones.
Amarnath Amarasingam is a doctoral candidate at Wilfrid Laurier University, and is currently completing his dissertation entitled, Pain, Pride, and Politics: Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism in Canada.
While it's unfortunate that Amarnath Amarasingam was expecting greater levels of racism in the Maclean's article, the fact that the article is poorly written from any research or journalistic perspective and is very short on actual facts, should be the first warning. White folks writing about racism and minimizing it is nothing new, what's new is the level of agreement they are getting from folks of colour, which saddens me. Particularly on rabble.
Racism in Canada is alive and well, and all the stereotypes about Asians (standing in for "Chinese") are in fact, racist stereotypes. The so-called newness of campuses being "more academic" versus "more of a party" is not even true. When I was applying to university/undergrad (I started first year in 1985), those characterizations of universities were firmly in place, only there was no racist attachment at that time to those characterizations and specific racial/cultural groups.
Twenty five years later and ignorant racist stereotypes, folded into already existing reputations of schools, and it's the same old racist bullshit once again.
Check out this babble thread for more thoughts on this issue.
Agree with Maysie,Agree with Maysie, Mr. Amarnath Amarasingam missed what the authors of the Macleans article are talking about.
Most of the arguments in this article are based on biased, anecdotal opinions and subjective judgments of the authors and anonymous persons, rather than based on validatable facts. It serves no other purpose than twisting the truth and misleading, it's rather a propaganda.
And just by looking at the subtitle of Maclean's article, 'Worries that efforts in the U.S. to limit enrollment of Asian students in top universities may migrate to Canada', we can easily see what the authors of the article really have in mind. They should have been more straight-forward by saying that they 'HOPE that efforts in the U.S. to limit enrollment of Asian students in top universities may migrate to Canada'!
It's a piece of work out of some people's jealousy to the success of other people. They still don't realize why they are not as successful as the 'Asian students' are, instead, they blamed the 'Asian' students' for working too hard, and even blamed their ethnicity. Now this is something beyond being appauling.
Even from the standpoint of conveying their racist ideas, I think this article is poorly executed, it's self-contradictary across the whole article. It failed to convince that it's an article written after seriously thinking. It just lacks basic facts to back up its ideas, well, because it's just B*U*L*L*S*H*I*T racist crap.
Too bad even such a poorly compiled article succeeded in manipulating people's minds. I suggest you read it again.
Wow. It is incredible to me that Mr. Amarasingam has come to a different conclusion than virtually every anti-racist activist in the country. The article was heavily criticized in all MSM presses, including the National Post. Indeed, even Macleans seems to disagree with his "analysis," since they pulled the article almost immediately and republished a heavily edited version.
Here's a secret: Macleans, the stenographers of white and economic privilege in Canada (a point, at least, Me. Amarasingam agrees with), doesn't "simply point out" anything. Framing the discussion with ignorant comments by two anonymous white girls (and letting them pass uncritically), passing off racist essentialist arguments as objective statistics, pitting Asian students against Canadian students and blaming Asian students for their own marginalization at the hands of "normal" white students are only the first, most glaring crimes of the Macleans article. The idea that Ken White's crew were "simply" engaging in some kind of rigorous postsecondary ethnocultural study is laughable. Again, this is not difficult analysis, and it's been going on for weeks before the above columnists decided that activists were making too much fuss about the racist propganda Macleans was spreading amongst the Canadian middle classes.
Another point of view about the article (just for balance):
Second generation Asians (or any race for that matter) tend to have very different perspectives on education and studying then first generation immigrants. That being said, as a first generation immigrant (albeit I came here at a young age), education has always been a huge priority in my family and hence I often had a similar mindset towards school as my Asian counterparts, rather then my so called "white" friends. I do take GREAT offense to how whites are portrayed as socialite party animals and believe there is a lot of ignorance in this article from both racial standpoints. However, as someone who has seen the TRUE issues that this cultural divide creates first hand, I must say it generally makes it a VERY unpleasant experience to be a non-Asian student at U of T. In general, I am by FAR the minority in science and engineering realms, as there are only one or two "white" students in almost all of my classes. Statistically, whites are the minority at U of T, this is a FACT. So let me get to the bi-products of this issue.
A large number of Professors and TAs at U of T don't speak proper English (not just Asian, but of other backgrounds too) and hence cannot adequately help answer questions in class or give proper feedback. I too have witnessed in my classes incessant chatter in Mandarin or Cantonese with barely an English word spoken. Furthermore, the "Asian cliques" VERY much stick together and DO NOT interact with other cultures. I consider this offensive and borderline racist. This makes group work and collaboration (which are seen as very important skills in any workplace) very difficult and awkward. In fact, because I do have very close Asian friends, I have first hands witnessed some Asian students making comments about "stupid white guys" in my classes. Funny how their reactions change when they discover I get better grades then most of them... hmm.
The Asian groups at U of T breed a culture of segregation and reverse discrimination because when the entire faculty leans towards a certain cultural group, others feel alienated and ostracized. I'm sorry but I'm paying almost 10,000 dollars a year for tuition AS A LOCAL student, and I expect at least a god damn professor or TA that speaks PROPER English! By the way I also have job to pay for my tuition, I don't get money from my parents. English is MY SECOND LANGUAGE.. and if I could go through the effort to learn it PROPERLY and embrace it as my primary language, then the University of Toronto should at the very least demand that those teaching courses have a proper grasp of the language.
To make a long story short, while this article if woefully ignorant, it does raise a valid concern. I would raise the same concern if it was any other cultural group, including whites. On a side note, in terms of a social life, I would have to completely agree that having a social life at U of T is almost non-existent unless you get involved in the fraternal or sorority groups around campus, which brings with an entirely different slew of issues. In effect, my first hand experiences at U of T have been very negative as a result of this cultural dichotomy and I wish that I had gone to a different school that had a more culturally balanced student body and placed greater emphasis on producing well rounded individuals rather then corporate drones. P.S. I'm also a Master Scuba diver, a ski instructor, I mountain bike, rock climb, and have a girl friend and social life... all while studying sciences at U of T. So I would argue that as long as you are focused, there's no reason that school has to entirely consume your life.
A white guy speaks out
I read this article by Amarnath Amarasingam linked from reader comments on the Globe and Mail Web site. Mr. Amarasingam misses the point. The problem is that the "Too Asian" article instills a sense of panic because in fact the universities have many Asian students. After reading the Maclean's article, we can only think that if universities are to attract more non-Asian students, they need to reduce the number of Asian students. Clearly the article shows that no one wants to attend an "Asian school".
The U of T president says that it's a "non-issue" but the authors refute it, almost attempting to make him look like a fool.
But what if I report that the name Amarnath Amarasingam makes Canadians think of a struggling immigrant who is likely a terrorist? The image that comes to mind is a dark person with funny clothes. A Canadian told me that this name has no credibility. He said everyone thinks this way.
And someone else with the Amarasingam name told me that he was so happy to immigrate to Canada because now he can "do crime" with impunity. The justice system here is too lenient, he said. At night time, he goes out to steal. He said, "I'm better than my friends. They are all building bombs."
Maybe I'll make the title, "Too criminal? Worries that dark skinned people will all be deported". I'm just reporting it. How do you like my reporting?
Please know that my reporting does NOT say Mr. Amarasingam is a terrorist or a criminal. But we have proved that he is an idiot.
Your words about him being an idiot, not his. He could very well consider you an alarmist idiot whose knee jerks every time an issue like this happens.