Whenever the subject of racism and discrimination is brought up in class, it is usually racism between blacks and whites. Black students often passionately argue about prejudices they face in American society. Rarely in class do we talk about discrimination among other minorities. Sometimes I cannot help but feel infuriated when blacks complain about discrimination against them when they have done the same thing to Asian Americans. I believe that whereas racism between blacks and whites is an important issue that should be addressed, racism among minority groups should not be neglected. If we do not address such issues, minority groups will continue to discriminate against each other, even though the relationship between blacks and whites may begin to improve.

For a while I’ve been trying to figure out why some African Americans discriminate against Asian Americans, and I asked several of my black friends their opinions. To my surprise, one of my black friends said that blacks discriminate against Asian Americans because they think that Asians do better financially than blacks do. African Americans see Asian Americans as laundromat owners, grocery storeowners, or restaurant owners and feel discontent that Asians earn more money when blacks have been in America longer than Asian Americans. Blacks “have portrayed Asians…as money-grubbing exploiters of blacks” (Padilla 3).

Economic issues and cultural misunderstandings between blacks and Asians lead to riots and boycotts of Asian stores. In the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, many Korean stores were destroyed (Yu 41). Koreans who came to America in the 70’s believed that America would provide a better future for themselves and especially for their children. Many lived in urban areas, such as South Central Los Angeles, which was mostly settled by blacks. The influx of Koreans became a concern for African Americans because they thought Koreans were taking their jobs away. That ideology has been misconstrued because even if Koreans or other competitors do not have businesses in predominantly black neighborhoods, blacks may still be unable to become store owners and entrepreneurs because they lack the “resource base” (Totten III and Schockman 27). It takes knowledge, education, money, finance and human resources to be entrepreneurs; therefore, the “absence of socio-economic competition [will not] increase African American economic development (Totten and Schockman 27).

Certain myths of Asian Americans also play a role in the way blacks see us. There is a general notion that Koreans came to America with money beforehand and decided to open stores to take over businesses, but that is not true (Yu 23). Koreans who came to the United States started off working in low-paying jobs and later rose became business owners. Many Koreans who came to American did not know English and, therefore, had to work in low-paying jobs, such as factory work and other menial labor that did not require them to use English. Like the Chinese who came before, many worked in urban cities receiving minimum wage. My parents, for instance, came to the US with 50 dollars in their pockets. My mother worked in a factory, and I have seen many women and men like her working in factories with bad conditions and low wages. Without the ability to speak English in America, one cannot progress in the work place and earn more money. It usually takes about 6 years of menial labor for 47.6 percent males and 45.7 percent female Koreans to establish their own businesses (Totten III and Schockman 8). About 70 percent of the businesses fail within the first three years (Schockman and Totten III 8). Through constant hard work and savings, Asian immigrants and their children succeed.

One reason I came to believe that blacks discriminate against Asians based on my observation is that many think Asians are “white-wannabes.” I live in a predominately black neighborhood and I remember a black kid asking me where I was from when I had lived in the same neighborhood as he for the past two years. He told me that I did not belong there because I was different, different in the way that I “dress and talk white.” I was confused by “dress and talk white” because I was wearing a Gap shirt with a pair of blue jeans. Maybe the Gap shirt that I wore made me “white” because Gap is a “white” brand. Tension between blacks and whites may have been going on for at least 400 years, but blacks should not associate Asians with whites. I was offended not because the guy said I acted white, but because he did not recognize my ethnicity. The clothes I wear will obviously be of American brands because those are what are sold here. Some African Americans think that we are closer to whites because white Americans use us as examples of role models for minorities (C.N.Lee). Newsweek and 60 Minutes praise Asian Americans for achieving success and “overcoming past instances of prejudice and discrimination without resorting to political and violent confrontations with whites” (C.N.Lee). The idea that Asian Americans as “model minority” creates a separation between us and other minority groups and an antagonistic feeling of some blacks toward Asians.

Although I have seen more evidence of negative interactions committed by African Americans against Asian Americans than vice versa, Asian Americans do have stereotypes of blacks. Asians often look down on blacks because they feel that “they tend to complain too much about racism and fail to adopt the Asian work ethic to work twice as hard when confronted with racism” (Hall and Hwang 47). Because of their work ethic, Asian Americans cannot understand why some blacks often appear on the streets without any work to do. In the movie directed by Spike Lee, “ Do the Right Thing,” blacks mock the Korean grocery owners in their town for earning blacks’ money. The blacks spend their time criticizing the Korean owners instead of seeking a job. Although the movie was slightly exaggerated, it still held some truth about the stereotypes.

Stereotypes make both groups look down on each other. Blacks find Asian storeowners to be “rude and disrespectful” when they do not make eye contact with black customers or when they do not deposit change directly into a black person’s hand (Yu 88). Asians believe that blacks are rude because they tend to be loud and rowdy (Yu 41). Unlike African Americans, Asian Americans tend not to speak up when there are problems. Asian Americans are brought up to be modest and subservient; therefore, to speak up or to object to something can be hard for Asian Americans. To avoid eye contact is a way for Asians to humble themselves. African Americans also have the perception that Asian Americans do not contribute to the community. According to Ivan Light, Asian merchants rarely attend community affairs or help raise money for charities (Totten III and Schockman 26). I hate to admit it, but most Asians do not participate in charity events and such. Many who are living under bad conditions would rather save their own money. In my experience, Asian Americans do not believe in charities, but believe in hard work that will eventually pay off in the future.

People naturally assume that Asian Americans are doing well because of their numbers in colleges and professional work place and because they do not face the problems that African Americans do. People have the notion that Asians are smart and will do well later in life; therefore, nothing should be done to assist them. Based on the data in Racism and the Underclass, “Chinese Americans who earn 74 percent or less than the poverty line rose from 6.5 percent to 9.6 percent of the total Chinese American population,” (Shepherd and Penna 105). There is a gap between upper and lower income Asian families; as the upper-income families become richer, the lower-income families become poorer.

A major confrontation between Asians and blacks that attracted national attention were the LA Riots. It opened up issues between blacks and Koreans and made Koreans and blacks realize the differences that should be addressed to prevent further destruction of the community. Korean stores had been boycotted many times before the incident, and some Korean merchants were even killed, but those incidents never brought national attention (Yu xvi). The Asian American communities “live in the friction between competing notions of ethnicity and nationality, in the margins and as a wedge between Black and White in American Society (Hwang 45). South Central Los Angeles is not the only place where problems exist between blacks and Asians. Boycotts of Korean grocers also occurred in New York City and other parts of the country. I interviewed one of my Korean friends whose parents owned a liquor store in Maple, Georgia, and she said that they encountered similar prejudices. There were several robberies in her parents’ stores, and most of the time blacks committed them. My friend saw guns pointed at her parents’ heads.

To hear such stories about Asian Americans who get picked on by blacks made me angry and frustrated. Many of my friends and I were called “chinks” by African Americans, and it seems that blacks always have the upper hand because Asians do not retaliate. I also thought that African Americans receive more attention and are given more opportunities, even though we are both minorities. I felt that Affirmative Action benefited the blacks or at least upper-class blacks the most. But it was not until I did my research that I became sympathetic to blacks’ frustrations and to the reasons blacks discriminate against Asian Americans. It turns out that both Asian Americans and African Americans benefit from Affirmative Action. Asians Americans benefited in the beginning, but later received less affirmative action; enrollment of Asians Americans in universities increased initially to about 10 to 15 percent (Affirmative Action). As more Asians are enrolled, colleges and universities decided to admit fewer Asians because they think Asians are “no longer “underrepresented” (Affirmative Action). Blacks continue to benefit from Affirmative Action, but their enrollment compared to Asians is still less.

Furthermore, the 2000 census data of socioeconomic characteristics of Asians Americans and blacks showed blacks with a lower percentage of high school graduates, college graduates, members of the labor force, high skill occupations and higher income than Asian Americans (Socioeconomic Statistic and Demographics). These factors contribute to prejudice because of the inequalities among blacks and Asians. I may be sympathetic, but I do not feel that these factors justify further discrimination against Asians. Furthermore, since Asian Americans comprise many different cultural groups such as Vietnamese, Cambodians, Chinese, Filipinos, etc., one cultural group that does better does not mean that all are doing better. Among Asians Americans, Vietnamese are doing far worse with high poverty rates and lack of education (Socioeconomic Statistic and Demographics). Many Vietnamese came to the US as refugees from the Vietnam War and, therefore, still need time to adjust to the American living, culture, and language.

Sometimes I wonder why minorities do not help to support each other since we are all on the same boat. Minorities who came here or were born here faced many obstacles such as a language barrier, financial restraints, and prejudice. Blacks may discriminate against Asian Americans as a way of ventilating their anger since whites oppress them. One author stated in his book American Minority Relation, that “Hostility that cannot find direct _expression against the dominant group may in some instances be rechanneled toward a permissive target, another minority” (Zanden 352). The big differences between Asian success and African American success make Asians an easy target for discrimination.

Despite the differences between them, Asian Americans have faced problems similar to blacks. Great number of Asians came in the 1850’s to work as railroad workers (Zanden 232). But as many came, people started to worry that Asians were taking away their jobs because they provided cheaper labor. The US passed the Exclusion Act in 1882 to suspend Chinese immigration, and the Chinese in the US were denied citizenship (Zanden 234). Asians populated cities and formed their own ghettos. Like African Americans, they could not own property or rent houses outside of their own areas, could not go to “places of public recreation,” and could not hold certain occupations because employment was denied to them (Zanden 235).

Although Asian Americans have been here for a long time, we are still treated as foreigners. One of my friends was asked whether he spoke English by a bus driver when he was clearly just walking out of Carnegie Mellon University. I have heard several times from people telling me to go back to my country, even though I was born and raised here. Even third or fourth generation Asian Americans who speak perfect English with no accent are told to go back to their country because they look different. People always ask me where I am from and I naturally responded “New York.” I know that right after I say that the next question asked will be “ No, really, where are you ‘really’ from?” as if I cannot possibly be from America because I have an Asian face.

Asian Americans may not have had as long a history in America as blacks have, but they still have been here for about two hundred years (Hwang 44). I was actually surprised to find out that Asians have been here for that long, because seldom in textbooks do we learn about Asian American history. I often feel like I know more about African American history than the history of Asians or Asian Americans. There is a Black History Month in school to celebrate blacks’ heritage, but Asian heritage is neglected. Asian Heritage Month was initiated in 1992, but seldom do people recognize May as Asian Heritage Month. In high school English class, we read books about Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, W.E.B Dubois, Frederick Douglas, and Booker T. Washington. I do not recall reading books in school by Asian writers except Amy Tan.

Not only do high schools sometimes completely neglect Asian studies, but colleges also do not have as many Asian study courses as I thought they would have. More courses in African studies are available than courses in Asian studies. Recently, students at Wellesley college planned to go on a hunger strike to demand that the administration provide more courses in Asian studies (C.N.Lee). I attended Cultural Connections at Yale to get to know other minorities better, but the Cultural Connections did not “connect” people from every background. Most of the topics we discussed related to African Americans and not Asian Americans. Because of these kinds of activities that mostly cater to blacks, I felt like an outcast and hated how blacks get most of the attention. Now that I am more aware of blacks’ problems and hardships, I am less critical and more concerned in promoting better understanding between Asian Americans and African Americans than blaming one side for discriminating against the other. 


Work Cited

Do the Right Thing. Dir. Spike Lee. Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks, Inc, 1989.

Hall, Patricia Wong, ed and Hwang, Victor M, ed. Anti-Asian Violence in North America. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mita P, 2001. 

Kim, Regina. Interview. 11 November 2003.

Le, C.N. “Socioeconomic Statistics and Demographics.” 2003. 16 Nov. 2003< http://www.asian-nation.org/demographics.shtml>.

Padilla, Maria T. “Are Ethnic Groups Just as Likely to Discriminate.” 1 July 1998. 16 Nov. 2003 <http://stdorgs.uww.edu/bsu/discriminate.htm>.

Shepherd, George W. Jr. and Penna, David, ed. Racism and the Underclass. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 1991.

Totten III, George O. and Schockman, Eric H, ed. Community in Crisis: After the Los Angeles civil Unrest of April 1992. CA: University of Southern California, Center for Multiethnic and Transnational studies, 1994. 

Yu, Eui-Young, ed. Black-Korean Encounter: Toward Understanding and Alliance. Los Angelos, CA: Institute for Asian America and Pacific Asian Studies, 1994. 

Zanden, James W. Vander. American Minority Relations. NY: The Ronald Press Company, 1963.