This guy is just incredible! I just had to share this video lol, super cool there are more and more awesome Asian male role models

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4USeNAYIuOc&ab_channel=SimpleHistory

Don't for one second feel insecure comparing yourself to this Asian King, we can each make our own impacts in day to day life, small daily decisions that add up to a big difference, small decisions that makes other Asians think “wow this guy cares and gives a shit, so I should too”.

Small decisions such picking an Asian family restaurant when thinking about eating out, shopping from an Asian vendor instead of another place, buying an Asian brand instead of western brand clothing or electronics, taking dates to Chinatowns and Koreatowns and Japantowns to let your culture impress her, deciding to vacation to Asia instead of europe, protecting an Asian when you see a person in public acting a fool, calling the police on them, and then confronting them, following subscribing liking and commenting on every Asian male influencers you see online, subscribing to tiktok and instagram tags #AMWF AMLF and other pro Asian hashtags so it goes viral and your social media feed is awesome, voting in Asian males and getting involved in Pro Asian organizations and their outreach programs.

Here are more ways we can each do small things that make a big difference. I will never ever be a fraction of the Asian man that Jonny Kim is, but I know if I make the decision to go out of my way every single day to help out other Asians, one day I will be a fraction of the man he is. I'm just a guy that uses Asian Male Latina Female passport broing to clickbait Asian guys into doing Asian activism, it's not much, but if we all chip in...it will mean a lot.

Curious to hear what people think about the importance of knowing or speaking your heritage as part of claiming an Asian identity.

View Poll

I know there are some Asian girls who refuse to date Asian guys because they aren't attracted to them, or because they want to gain status by dating a white guy, but in my experience these Asian girls are few and far between (and honestly not very high quality to begin with). The much more common reason I've experienced, especially living in Asia, is that dating an Asian guy also involves dating his family in a sense. And traditional Asian parents/families can be very overbearing and sometimes too involved in their children's dating lives. Not to mention all the family gatherings and other traditions that would need to be observed if an Asian female dates an Asian male. I've seen a lot of extremely attractive and successful Asian women who are fit, super driven in their careers etc. say that they don't have the time to deal with another Asian family in addition to their own, so they prefer dating outside their race even though they are totally attracted to Asian men.

On one hand, I totally get it. Whenever I date a white girl, I don't have to worry about pleasing their families, sweet talking their parents, or bringing gifts over when visiting her (because she probably doesn't live with her parents unlike most Asian girls). I'm dating the girl because I like her, not because I like her family after all. But when I date an Asian girl, I have to be much more aware of things like my family background, my education, whether or not my job is prestigious enough to impress their family, how often I visit their parents, etc. Not to mention the pressure of giving my in-laws grandchildren, which for some reason Asian parents have no filter about when talking to their kids' partners.

So I completely get wanting a XM/XF partner because their families will be less of a burden and cause less stress. But how do I navigate this conversation when talking to Asian women, especially ones I'm interested in dating myself? And how can I convince them that my parents are actually pretty westernized and not overbearing at all?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNKFOCki42I

I have a question and I apologize if this isn't exactly the focus of this sub but it does affect all Asians and Asian Americans.

How will AI impact all the professional world? I've alot of statistics lately and have had alot of my fellow friends in CS from all races get out of work recently.

The video I linked above kinda scares me because while I would like to think that we could have a universal basic income I feel like the liklihood of that happening in most countries is very slim especially in the U.S.

Asians don't have as many B.S. jobs and I feel like would be the first to go during the A.I. revolution in the U.S.

Pretty good. I know Ken Jeong is polarizing but he's pretty good in this one. Does he redeem himself? He's never going to play the badass Alpha male and I think the Asian males in this movie are kinda cringey. However, I think the movie did a good job at showing that you don't necessarily have to lift weights to speak up for us.

Edited: Also if you look at the YouTube comments, you will see that they are triggered. So it's doing it's job.

https://youtu.be/Z6fnt_Os7Mc?si=bJfVRg_7pYgexWME

As an Asian American man, I do not ask Asians to participate in absolute solidarity on every Asian topics I presented. Herd mentality have a dark-side. However, when it comes anti-Asian male propaganda in the west, I find that there are more extreme antagonists among our own that pushed lies to pander to white supremacy.

I came across this video essay by a beautiful young Palestinian-American woman international lawyer based out of Paris name Lara Elborno who spoke kindly of and retort the ongoing demonetization of Palestinian men. In her video essay, she presented Palestinian men as gentle, intelligent and caring individuals.

Asian American struggles have nothing on the struggles of the Palestinians in modern era, nor am I even attempting to compare the keeping-out of Asian men from fully integrating into western society by the mainstream media to Palestinian plight and genocide. If we're talking about the Korean and Vietnam War era, it's comparable then. Anyway, I share this video because I can only imagine having a beautiful, intelligent and articulate women speaking on our behalf. I've always loved Ms Lara Elborno type of women.

My brother in-law (AM) is a Seattle bus driver, so this story is hitting close to home for me and my wife. All Seattle area buses have cameras; I think the police have enough info to find the perpetrator, so do not want to have tips flooding their call center(s).

Authorities said the incident began as a physical altercation between Yim and a male passenger on the bus. After the assault, Yim managed to walk a short distance before collapsing. The suspect got away and is still on the loose. - Northwest Asian Weekly

"The Orientals doesn't put the same high price on life does a westerner. Life is plentiful; life is cheap in the Orient. As the philosophy of the Orient as expresses it, life is not important." - General Westmoreland (Hearts and Minds Documentary)

The documentary was released in 1974. That's 200 years into American history with Native American genocide and enslavement of Africans.

"After dispossessing Native American of their land and committing genocide against them, American history-books still call the Native Americans savages. That's extraordinary." -Richard Wolff (Not Verbatim)

I am eurasian (half white and half asian) and I did a dna test in ancestry. When it should my european side, it showed what exact province my european side was from. But for my east asian side, it just said Korea and thats it. What DNA testing provider provides more detailed overview for asian dna (such as detailing which province/ village i am from like how ancestry does with my western side).

I (23M) was born in Asia, immigrated to the US in 2012, and studied at an elite private high school for 6 years before attending a T20 university in 2018 where I was later conferred an SB in EECS. I am currently a US Citizen and live in a studio apartment in an affluent neighbourhood of which I pay $1650/month for. I am currently engaged in post graduate research to prepare for my PhD in a few years, and make money as a software consultant, freelance mobile app developer, part-time tech YouTuber, and part-time investor. I am an aspiring tech startup entrepreneur.

I have positive relations with my paternal family (most of his US-bound relatives immigrated to the US with H1B visas and reside in NJ, VA, CA). However, I have ambivalent (mostly negative) relations with my maternal family of which all of her US-bound relatives live in the same state an hour away from me.

Due to the fact my paternal relatives are affluent/influential, and communists, they are being perceived as the 'black sheep' and 'scapegoats' in my mother's family. My maternal relatives also espouse traditionalistic views and are apathetic towards elite institutions. For example, they heavily practise filial piety and hair dye/tattoos are off limits in the family.

My parents (74M, 63F) still live in Asia and even though both are retired, they were former mid to high ranking dignitaries in Asia and have millions in assets.

During high school, my unweighted GPA was very close to 4.0 (my weighted GPA was much higher given the fact I took many AP courses as well as post-AP courses such as Multivariable Calculus/Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Discrete Maths, CS 2, etc) and I received a 1550 on the SAT (800M, 750V) as well as an 800 on two SAT subject tests (Math II, Physics). I even competed in the USAMO and ISEF and had two CS internships in Summer of 2017 and 2018.

Even though I have achieved a lot during my childhood years and adolescence and was contemplating about starting a tech startup, my mother's side showed more affection towards my sister (23F) who dreamt of becoming a general practitioner and went to a university with a >80% acceptance rate (in the same city as me as my parents attended her commencement and I drove my parents there).

They gave her more warmth, they talked in a nicer and more friendly tone towards her, and they even praised her, whilst my achievements were mostly ignored and instead, I was castigated during family gatherings and at worse, even ostracised. My older cousins sometimes even engaged in corporal punishment if I didn't socialise with the whole family and I am obviously weak at social skills myself. That made me feel jealous because even though my father and mother helped fund for my schooling, they as well as the whole of the mother's side collectively funded her lifestyle and gave her perks and affection.

In fact, in 2014, during 9th grade, my maternal relatives attempted to tell my parents to withhold my tuition money and send me to a worse private school and siphon that money towards her so she could get freebies as well as attend some school like Philips Andover whilst also buying a condo/single house for her due to her 'respecting the family more' and 'knowing how to speak their language'.

We attended the same high school and we lived with our older sister (34F) in a 2000 sqft house.

In 2019, things did take a turn for the worse. I was still under 18 in summer of 2019 so I couldn't invest the money nor have a bank account of my own, but needless to say, I bought a safe to stockpile all the money I earned through internships, YouTube revenue, and mobile app revenue at the time, so my bank would typically have amounts in the low thousands for immediate purchases. Needless to say, in July 2019, due to the fact my 34F sister is still in charge of my bank account, I saw that my balance went down from $6000 to $1000. I essentially lost $5000 of my own money and guess what:

All of the money went to my 23F sister.

In August, I found out the whole family pooled in money and used my money to buy her a $700k condo in the poshest neighbohrhood/suburb (even moreso than mine which is a college neighbourhood) and they also bought her a brand new 2019 BMW 330xi as well as pooled in money for her EB5 visa. 3 years later, they bought her a Porsche Taycan.

Due to this, I became jealous at her.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a therapist at the time, so I ended up so infuriated I essentially had a vocal altercation with her on the phone that went a little bit too far that my sister decided that she will go NC against me and 'lost her trust' on me. In retaliation, I went NC with everyone in my family, except my parents because I kinda rely on them for financial support as I just started to make in the mid 5 figures per year on my software. In September 2019, I started my own bank account, sold the safe, and stockpiled my money into the bank, where I funneled in all of it towards investments. By 2021, I sacked them and was 100% self reliant, and frugal (that meant I didn't move to any luxe-apartments nor did I buy any car and instead used a $250 Walmart bike to commute). Tesla went so frenzy I multiplied that 50k by a lot by November 2021.

Even though everything was harmonious between 2019-20 with me coexisting with her in the same city, things started to go out of control in 2020 that made my undergraduate GPA plummet, from a 4.8 in 2018-19 to a 4.6 in 2020 (remote year), and then to a 4.0 in 2021 (first in person year).

Turns out, even though I have no idea of my sisters whereabouts whether she is in Asia or in the US as it was COVID, turns out police knocked on my apartment door and gave me a warning that my sister reported me to them for "stalking" at her college (had no idea where she studied and I was minding my own business and did not go to her college). That was what caused a heated altercation with my relatives. I told my relatives to calm my sister down, apologise for my supposed 'wrongdoing' and asked them to let her know I did nothing wrong and that I was minding my own business.

My parents and relatives defended her and sided with her the entire way, and even my cousin (29M) sided with her, even though he claimed to "support" me. She even tried to accused me of SA, which could alter my life, which might have explained the GPA slump. I was made the pariah of the family in July 2019 due to the altercation.

In 2020, she travelled to Asia and my parents sold that condo in September 2020, so I had no idea where she lived as my parents own multiple multi-family and single family units throughout the metropolitan area.

That made me paranoid, wanting to transfer out to another university in another state but feared upon losing my place at a top tier university, and it caused me to have trauma and sleepless nights and disinterest in studying which was what caused my GPA to plummet. It is so fascinating that my mother's family who obviously support her tell me they have nothing to do with her and they can't control her life and they just essentially let her free roam like this, which was what harmed my life. They even gaslit me, making claims that she is 'stubborn', 'a tough girl', etc, and that she won't listen because she came from wealthy family, and spread misinformation that children of impoverished parents are better behaved and more compassionate.

I know my sister very well as we were classmates at high school and she is known to volunteer and help other people out, mentor, and offer therapy/counseling to marginalised/neurodivergent people, even if her grades/SATs weren't as stellar as mine and she took less AP courses than me.

In 2021, I essentially returned to campus so depressed that I essentially lacked any support as I had no therapists or psychiatrists, and my GPA plummeted big time. Even though I had an internship, a research fellowship, led a campus club, and held awards, etc, during 1st and 2nd year, I was heavily demotivated in the 2021-2 school year and all I wanted to do was graduate. After graduating, I took a small 1 week Europe trip to Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, Bratislava, and Prague, and went back to just a deep several month rest. I did eventually get hold of a therapist and actually got a relatives RAV4 in the beginning of 2023 whilst they buy a Tesla Model Y for themselves and just driven around the East Coast for some relaxation.

Between 2019 and mid-2023 when my sister graduated from university and my parents visited US for the first time since COVID, I had no contact with her whatsoever. I didn't have any idea what neighbourhood or town she lived between 2020 and 2023, let alone the house. Now even though May 2023 was the only time since 2019 when I did talk to her, apologising to her for the 2019 incident, establishing boundaries, and ameliorating the relationship, she claimed she is traumatised by my actions, had sleepless nights, and had to resort to therapist. She ended up using profanity in front of me as well. She also wanted to report me for SA and when I told her not to, she said she will, if she assumes I message her, even if it was someone else.

Later, one of my cousins told me that my sister was featured on the student spotlight on the front page of the school, despite the fact my family gaslighted me telling me she is a low achiever and struggled in college. I also found out on YouTube watching her school graduation that she graduated summa cum laude (3.9/4.0) and held an internship in Healthcare and now is hired full time in that position. I was immensely betrayed. It's so baffling my family let my GPA slide whilst my sister essentially got full support even from extended family and is uplifted. She even benefited off my money and my work. Her school even praised her for being extremely involved in the school and mentions nothing about trauma whatsoever.

Afterwards, I started to use my mobile revenue and investment portfolio to live off it, joined a post-undergrad research fellowship at my university in summer 2023 after returning home from yet another trip in Europe for escapism as well as start Doordashing for some fresh air outside and extra money for petrol/electric as well as to clear my brain, and all went well. Despite that, I might have bumped into her neighbourhood several times as I visited every neighourhood in the city as well as nearby suburbs through Doordash. My sister and family have been campaigning for me to leave the metro area which might result in me losing my network as well as support for my tech startup as my city is one of the top cities for tech in the US.

Later, my parents even advised her to move to another state, but she refused, even though there are thousands of other states which offer research assistant and healthcare positions.

TL;DR: 5 years ago, there was an incident that caused me (23M) to be estranged from my family and upended my life, and even though I went NC with large swaths of my family, my sister still accused me of 'calling her' despite not knowing her number, and now she and my family are threatening litigation against me, making it hard to ignore. The only thing I wanted to do now is leave this state entirely to totally forget about this family but then I would have to restart my social network from scratch if I were to move to let's say, California.

Sis, if you are reading this, I truly apologise for the behaviour I did against you back in 2019. I tried my best to fix my behaviour and visit a therapist. I just felt like I had to vent because of this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ghhTV0ICrU

Biracial babies born to U.S. soldiers and Korean women were ostracized in South Korea. Racist laws encouraged single mothers to send their biracial children overseas for adoption. That’s one of the ways how South Korea became the world’s largest exporter of babies in the past six decades.

Adoption agencies are accused of falsifying records by making the children orphans on paper. But Kwon-si – or Simon – has clear memories of his mother and of his birthplace in Paju. AJ+ followed him followed him through his personal journey, searching for not only his mother but also his identity.

It's common to be gaslighted for our experiences with racism as an Asian in the West.

But do people think that white people CAN ever understand? Like unless a white person was born in Asia, has an Asian passport, went through the entire local school system, speaks an Asian language exactly like a local - can a white person that grew up in the West ever understand our experiences?

I have lived in many countries across different cultures and see that people age relatively different, viewing from different race's perspective. For example, Asians look younger than their white counterparts and vice versa.

I must say that when I moved back to Asia (as an Asian), I often estimated people's ages wrongly. I once thought a 23 years old person to be 16.

I mean no offense, I know it sounds a bit judgemental but I just got an ick seeing some white guys dating younger asian girls around 20+ years old, because technically they look just like teenagers. Also sometimes some Asians behave more childish in relation to the western world, so technically the relationship looks like .. you know where I'm going to..

Am I the only one seeing it this way?

I've been loathing Uncle Roger ever since he went mainstream and all the dumb WHITE kids at school started mimicking his fake accent like it's the funniest thing ever. Everyone that has tried to call him out either has gained no traction or has been shouted down by all his skibidi fans to the point of deleting videos and closing comments, but I was recommended a video yesterday that I think might FINALLY change public opinion about Uncle Roger.

It's very convincing and the comment section is actually calling out Uncle Roger too. It sucks that this matters but a couple of top comments are from Black people calling out Uncle Roger, and what they say have more weight to your average "tolerant left". Sad but true.

The video also calls out Steven He but there's something about Uncle Roger's smugness that ticks me off extra. That guy who hate crimed him did us all a favour.

https://youtu.be/B_1T8IWFzdg

In closing, UncleRogerSUXX. Amen.

Hi everyone! 

I’m a clinical psychology graduate student at cleveland state university. I’m conducting a paid, remote research study on the mental health of South Asian American immigrants, and we’re looking for participants! 

We’re specifically seeking: 

• Ages 18 years and older 

• Second-generation immigrants (children of immigrants) or 1.5-generation immigrants (immigrated before age 12) 

• From South Asian countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, or Sri Lanka 

• Currently residing in the United States 

What’s involved? 

• A preliminary online video call screening 

• An online questionnaire 

• Participants will receive a $10 Amazon gift card for their time 

This study is IRB-approved (IRB-FY2024-177), and all responses are completely confidential. 

If you’re eligible and interested, we’d love for you to participate! You can fill out the interest form here. 

If you know someone who might qualify, feel free to share this post or the study details with them. Every referral helps! 

Thank you so much for supporting this important research! 

https://preview.redd.it/zo9bxxs4ui7e1.png?width=1545&format=png&auto=webp&s=6e6109f9ce56d1120dfe76f78528b3dbf37aaff7

just think about it. lets say china decides to remake rambo as a chinese saviour movie. rambo is replaced by a tall, handsome, jacked up chinese man. He goes to syria and single handedly liberates damascus, and rescues a beautiful blond red cross girl who was kidnapped by terrorists, hooks up with her, and then also hooks up with a sexy belly dancing arab woman who hates her own men and wants to go to china. The movie has two sex scenes (like typical james bond movies) one an explicit sweaty sex scene with the arab girl, and another more romantic one with the 'aryan' red cross girl. Then the movie ends with chinese rambo riding off into the sunset with the syrians cheering him and waving the china flag.

if you felt outraged, i would remind you that all i just said was just a typical hollywood movie.

First time hearing about this at all and made my blood boil. That's a problem that this news isn't spread amongst the asian community so trying to do it now.

https://nypost.com/2023/06/15/finance-exec-54-accused-of-drugging-and-raping-young-teen-at-hotels-across-nyc/

https://preview.redd.it/mxy7ildych7e1.png?width=1520&format=png&auto=webp&s=c2372d8237d1440f2e646055b051f9afc3f0c150

https://preview.redd.it/jge3664keh7e1.png?width=1464&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d06a5bb1e1132dcfc3e264c26b05baa3f4184a0

Recently sentenced to just 16 years in prison: https://nypost.com/2024/12/17/us-news/disgraced-nyc-financier-accused-of-preying-on-teen-girls-including-14-year-old-he-raped-faces-16-years-in-prison/

Originally saw this on AsianMasculinity from user seriousleek. Saw this hadn't been posted here yet and figured some who hadn't seen it would appreciate it, the original blogpost no longer exists. You can also see the original reddit post on the consulting subreddit by user QiuYiDio. Even if this doesn't exactly apply to you, it may be helpful to know how racial perceptions manifest in moving up the corporate hierarchy.

Post from Dalglish Chew, a former McKinsey Associate Partner:

On Bamboo Ceilings

Things I wish I’d known earlier in my career about being Asian in America

I’ve had to teach myself a great deal about the culture of the United States since moving here over a decade and a half ago. Some of the culture shocks landed immediately, like the wearing of shoes indoors (!) while others took a few more awkward interactions to figure out, like the fact that when Americans ask you “How’re you doing?” you’re not actually being invited to give them a run down of how your day went. But by far the most consequential cultural challenges I’ve had to navigate have come from my professional life. At McKinsey, as at most professional services firms where reviews and promotions occur in rapid 6-month cycles, my odds of advancement rested on my ability to achieve an accelerated mastery of things you’re just supposed to know, i.e., corporate America’s hidden curriculum.

For those of us who didn’t grow up in corporate America’s dominant culture, the difficulties involved in achieving this mastery are manifold. Culture, to paraphrase Roland Barthes, consists of “things that go without saying.” Assuming you’ve realized that your challenges have a cultural component (no mean feat in itself), the fact that dominant cultural norms are just accepted by the majority as common sense means that you not only don’t know what you don’t know, but also that those who do know can’t explain it to you. Moreover, we don’t arrive in America tabula rasa, but with our own cultures that we’ve been steeped in from birth. Trying to unlearn or fight our own cultural conditioning head-on would take far too long, and often feels inauthentic. Instead, what’s required are ways of reframing our challenges in ways that enable us to work with, rather than against, our cultural scripts in a fashion that feels both productive and true. What I’ve written below are a series of five reframes that have been most helpful to me and those I’ve coached and mentored over the years.

Before I begin, an important caveat: Asians in America are not a monolith, and my use of the label “Asian” in these reflections isn’t intended to flatten an entire continent’s worth of linguistic and cultural diversity. At one extreme of specificity, my experience is one of being an ethnically East Asian (Chinese) recent immigrant to the United States from a Southeast Asian (Singaporean) country. But I offer up my story here on the wager that what I’ve learned can be helpful not only to people of my specific circumstances, but also to those who’ve grown up in cultures with similar features. I regret the limits of this necessary generalization — but on the off chance that others will recognize themselves (or others they manage) in these words and find succor, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

1: You’re not shy, you just hold yourself to a different bar

Six months into my first year at McKinsey, I was given the feedback that I needed to “speak up” more. When I asked how I could improve, the advice I got amounted to different versions of “just do it,” which is helpful when you’re selling sportswear, but less so when “doing it” is precisely the difficulty. It’s true that I didn’t speak as much as my colleagues did in meetings, but I couldn’t figure out what was holding me back — while I’m an introvert, I’m hardly shy, and most of my friends would probably prefer that I be less assertive, not more. As a first-year associate, the feedback sent me into a weeks-long tailspin where I kept searching myself for the personality defect that was preventing me from "speaking up,” which of course did little to improve how I was showing up in the team room since I was in my head so much.

The unlock didn’t come until I met up with some of my colleagues of Asian descent. None of us are what I’d consider shy or unopinionated, but we’d somehow all gotten the same feedback to “speak up” more. Our mutual commiseration helped me realize that the problem wasn’t shyness, a lack of confidence, or an absence of opinions, but rather a cultural default we shared that imposes a high bar on speaking up. For those of us who share this default, who gets to “speak up” in a given situation is not determined by being in possession of an opinion, but by having the right position — that is, a position of authority, seniority, and expertise. While my non-Asian colleagues simply had to traverse the straight line between having an opinion and voicing it, I was subjecting every opinion that popped into my head to a complex analysis of whether I was in a qualified position to offer it at all.

This reframing of “speaking up” as a question of position rather than personality was game-changing for me. In absolute terms, it may be a while before you stop being the youngest, most junior person on the team, and unless you actually are shy, trying to be less shy won’t work, since it was never the problem to begin with. What helped me and others I’ve worked with unlock the ability to speak up in situations like these is leaning into the places of our relative expertise, authority, and seniority — the Excel model that you spent the week building and that only you know the ins and outs of, the nuances of the client conversation that only you were part of, the detailed research on the industry that only you performed. The next time you find yourself feeling unqualified to speak up, remember what you do know better than everyone else in the room, and create your own permission to speak up. These positions of relative power are always available to you, no matter how inexperienced or junior you are, because you’re the only one who’s done your job.

2: Your actions will not speak for themselves

For those of us who grew up in families that didn’t say “I love you,” how did you know that you were loved? If your parents were anything like mine, love was never spoken but instead found in the sliced fruit that appeared in your room at regular intervals, the constant reminders to wear a jacket and keep warm, the money spent on your extracurriculars instead of things they needed … and so forth. Consciously or unconsciously, the cultural script we internalize from such an upbringing necessarily attunes us to the emotional force of the unsaid — we learn how to recognize it in the actions of others, and how to communicate it with our own. In a culture where an action can speak volumes, it is not only unnecessary to verbalize its meaning, but often seen as a cheapening of its sincerity.

The problem is that most of us in America will never work in an organization where this is the cultural default. When I first became a manager, I supported my team in the only way I knew how: by spending time with them, teaching them what I knew, and advocating fiercely for them in their performance reviews. Imagine my surprise when my 360 feedback indicated that my main area of improvement was that I needed to offer more verbal praise and acknowledgement. This feedback left me feeling angry, frustrated and under-appreciated. Wasn’t it obvious from the care I showed my teams that I appreciated them, and why on earth did I have to spell it out? If you can imagine how your Asian dad would react if you dared to complain about his lack of emotional effusiveness, that’s exactly how I reacted initially. The reframe that ultimately helped me was the realization that I worked with colleagues who didn’t share my cultural scripts, and so didn’t share the same sensitivity to the unsaid that I did. It wasn’t that my teams didn’t appreciate what I did for them, it was simply that they hadn’t been steeped in a culture that would’ve enabled them to register the unspoken care and regard I intended (this is analogous to Gary Chapman’s concept of the five love languages).

But it isn’t just our love for our teams that’s potentially getting lost in translation - it’s everything we keep doing for our employers that we imagine speaks volumes about how deserving we are of career advancement, even though it really doesn’t. The additional responsibilities we take on without complaint, the late nights and weekends we quietly work to help our teams get ahead, the second shift of “extracurriculars” we take on to be a good team player — all the ways we tell our jobs that we love them, while we wait for them to notice and love us back, and grow frustrated when they don’t. If this is the position you’re in, reframing the issue as one of cultural translation means that career advancement doesn’t require you to do any more than you already are (phew!), but it does require you to take the extra step of saying to your colleagues why and how it all matters — because your workplace isn’t an Asian family, and your actions will not speak for themselves.

3: Being “easy to work with” is not the asset you think it is

Growing up Chinese in Singapore, it often seemed to me and my peers that one of the worst social transgressions any of us could commit was to “stand out” in any way. The specific reasons for which one might “stand out” didn’t particularly matter — it was considered just as unseemly to publicize one’s virtues as it was to achieve notoriety for one’s faults. Indeed, the Chinese proverb “木秀于林, 风必摧之” attributed to writer and politician Li Kang of the Three Kingdoms period literally reminds us that it is the tree that grow tallest that most risks being toppled by the wind. Of course, the prohibition against “standing out” didn’t preclude us from being ambitious. But it did mean that we understood the path to power and influence as requiring the maintenance of an artful optical illusion in which one demonstrated competence while drawing as little attention to oneself as possible. Consider, for instance, the recently named successor to Singapore’s Prime Minister — often described in the press as “unassuming” and “extremely easy to work with,” he had, until he was tapped for role, repeatedly denied having any designs on the prime ministership, and opened his first press conference as heir apparent by stating that he had “never hankered for post, position, or power.”

If you grew up in a culture similar to the one I describe, then it’s likely that you too have honed to perfection this disappearing act. By the time I arrived in the U.S. at the age of 21, it had become a point of pride for me to be “easy to work with” — that is, to take up as little space as possible with my wants or ambitions because I truly believed that only a maximum of competence and a minimum of visibility would pave the way for my success. Imagine my surprise when the feedback I received from the powers-that-be was that while I was indeed “easy to work with,” no one really knew what to do with me, much less recommend me for advancement opportunities, because I had never made clear what I wanted for my career. It wasn’t only that I was mistaken in believing that being small would help me succeed, but also that it felt viscerally dangerous for me to call attention to myself by, say, advocating for my own professional development or asserting the value of my own strengths. I still recall vividly how having to write “I” statements in the paperwork for my performance reviews gave me a pit in my stomach as a first-year associate, as well as the awkward passive sentences I used as substitutes, which obviously did me no favors.

How do you overcome a lifetime of cultural conditioning that makes advocating for yourself at work feel like courting disaster — like an overgrown tree asking to be cut down by the wind? The reframe that’s worked for me is realizing that whatever we may feel we risk by taking up space with our ambitions and wants, we risk all the more by making ourselves small. In a corporate culture where everything is on the surface and everyone’s strengths and designs on career advancement are on full technicolor display, an individual’s absence of visible ambition is more likely to be experienced by others as apathy (at best) or hypocrisy and dissembling (at worst) than as humility. In other words, when transposed to the context of corporate America, the cultural scripts that we’ve internalized to keep us safe from social censure are precisely the ones that inspire in others the greatest misgivings about us. You don’t have to wait until it feels safe to advocate for yourself professionally or stake a claim to the advancement you want, because that moment is not going to come any time soon. You just have to remember that by remaining small, it’s likely you’ve already provoked the professional extinction you were hoping to avoid in the first place. Put simply, your smallness will not save you — so grow tall, my friends.

4: You can take control of how others tell your story

By now, it is common knowledge that even individuals with egalitarian beliefs are apt to use unconsciously gendered language in performance reviews to the detriment of their female colleagues. Indeed, one of the first training sessions I attended at McKinsey was a workshop on how to avoid exactly this genre of unconscious bias, where the same behaviors that earn men praise for “taking charge” and “having initiative” get labeled “abrasiveness” and “aggression” when exhibited by women. To my knowledge, there has not been any systematic research into a similar phenomenon that applies to Asian professionals. At the time, I didn’t remark on the absence of any training on unconscious racial bias when it came to colleagues of my ethnic and cultural origin. At any rate, I figured that the stereotypes associated with employees who looked like me tended to be positive (at least at the entry level — but more on this shortly).

Roughly two years into my time as an associate, however, I began to observe a subtle pattern forming in the feedback that I was receiving. It took me a while to notice because it sounded very much like praise — for my problem-solving skills, for my conscientiousness, for the high quality of my work, and so forth. It didn’t occur to me that I might be headed for a problem until I discerned the complete absence of any references to the skills that actually get associates promoted to manager, like leadership and relationship building. It wasn’t that I wasn’t taking every opportunity to demonstrate these skills, but that everyone’s attention was trained elsewhere (albeit on what they considered my strengths). This left me in a quandary: how was I supposed to respond to feedback that wasn’t serving me without upsetting those who thought they were praising me? There was also no small amount of doubt and self-minimization on my part, as surely “receiving the wrong kind of praise” can’t count as a real problem in a world where women and other minorities have to deal with actual negative bias?

After months of faffing about, the devastatingly simple solution came to me in a moment of uncharacteristic boldness. On the receiving end once again of feedback from a partner that I was a “problem-solving whiz” who could “do anything with numbers,” I thanked him and pointed out that (a) while he may believe he was paying me a compliment, he would in fact be doing me a disservice if he repeated those words to a review committee who would simply take those strengths as table stakes for someone of my background, and (b) I wondered if he had anything to say about my leadership and relationship building skills? I’m not sure what possessed me to be so bold, and I absolutely wished in that moment that the ground would open up and swallow me whole — but I will also never forget the look on his face when I said that, or the way he responded after. To his credit, he took no offense but genuinely welcomed my feedback on how I experienced the feedback he was giving me — which, I suspect, is how most people leaders who don’t have any intention of being biased would respond. He not only did have positive feedback to provide on my leadership and relationship-building skills, but also offered to work with me in the coming weeks to make sure that I would have enough opportunities to demonstrate them in ways he could relay to the review committee.

My promotion to manager came just 2 - 3 months later, but I took away from this moment a reframe to last a lifetime: Although workplace feedback may often feel like a judgment on your qualities handed down to you from “on high,” it is really nothing more than the sum of the stories that people tell about you. It may take a little boldness and some gumption, but you don’t have to acquiesce to being the object of the feedback you receive, like a character in a story told by others in a foreign language — you can take control of the narrative and teach others how you want your story to be told.

5: It’s not personal, but prove them wrong anyway

Midway through my tenure as a manager, which is right around the time where consultants start to get sized up for their propensity to succeed as future partners of the Firm, I began to receive a peculiar genre of feedback that went something like this (and I paraphrase): “You are very credible with clients and are an excellent communicator, especially when it pertains to the work you’re doing. However, we would like to see evidence that you can build relationships with clients that extend beyond the day-to-day.” When I asked the powers-that-be for more specificity as to what sort of behaviors I was being asked to perform, the responses that I got amounted to something like “maybe take your clients out for coffee” and “talk to them about something other than the work you’re doing.”

I sat on that feedback for over an entire year without doing much of anything about it, which is an eternity in McKinsey time. Part of my hesitation had to do with the sheer idiocy of the feedback I was receiving (I apologize, there really is no other way to say it). Were the powers-that-be really trying to tell me that I was a credible client counselor and communicator but they needed to know whether I knew how to relate to people outside of work? Do they not think that I have friends? Do they think that outside of work I’m a troll who lives under a bridge? I kept trying to find a way to work with the feedback productively, but couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being asked to prove that I could “make friends and not alienate people” (to paraphrase Dale Carnegie). It’s not that I disagreed that “making friends” was an important part of the job or that I actually doubted my ability to do so — but that I couldn’t get over the complete inanity of being asked to prove that I could. It was like being asked to retrace my steps and prove that I had the social developmental skills of a four year old before I would be considered worthy of the partnership.

After over a year of unhelpful fuming about this feedback, I finally decided it was time to do something about it. Towards the end of my time as a manager, I was staffed on an engagement where an urgent need came up that required consultants to travel to the client site. Since we were in the middle of a pandemic, no one wanted to make the trip — sensing an opportunity, I volunteered as tribute. As part of this trip, I made sure to get coffee and dinners scheduled with senior clients, during which I (naturally) talked about topics other than work. Upon my return, I made sure to relay the effect of these conversations and what I had learned from them to multiple people I could be sure would attest to the fact. By my next review cycle, I was being celebrated for my “sophisticated” client influencing skills and well on my way to being promoted to associate partner, and we never spoke of that absurd piece of feedback again.

I will never be able to prove that the feedback was rooted in a racial stereotype, so I leave it to you to decide whether a white, male mid-career consultant from the American Midwest would’ve been given the same feedback. What I will say is that for most of my 5 years at McKinsey, there was only one male partner who looked like me in the Bay Area office, a complex of 1,000+ consultants and 100+ partners in a region with the highest relative population of Asian / Asian-Americans in the continental U.S. At any rate, none of this has any bearing on the final reframe I offer you, which is that if you find yourself in a similar situation, the best thing you can do is to refuse to take it personally, and find the most efficient, timely way to prove them wrong anyway. It will mean that you will have to work twice as hard to prove half as much, and that this will sometimes feel personally offensive to you — but there are scant alternatives (at least for the moment). It is not lost on me that this reframe, like all of the ones that come before, involve no small amount of effort on the part of Asian professionals to work within the constraints of the “bamboo ceiling,” while for the most part leaving those barriers intact. If you find yourself in a situation similar to the one I describe, I am not saying that you shouldn’t get angry (you absolutely should!) or demand that your employers do better (ditto!), but I am saying that even as we continue the necessary labor of provoking wholesale, systemic change, that change is going to take time — and your career cannot wait. Until that long-awaited change comes, I hope you will find in these words something to help you stay in the fight.

"hurr durr you are imagining things, there is nothing wrong with only showing asian women and white men and zero asian men, it is still asian representation!" here's a thought experiment, lets do a role reversal. Lets say you go to china and you see that the CPC has made a lot of propaganda posters about how multicultural china is, about how china is bringing world peace. However, you notice in every single poster, the asian ethnicities are portrayed as men, while the caucasian and black ethnicities are always portrayed as women. also, every poster encouraging interracial marriage is a chinese man with a white woman. every propaganda movie, say wolf warrior 3, ends up with the chinese guy hooking up with a white woman. There is never a white or black man anywhere in the film, unless as the butt of the joke. and lets say there is never any asian women in these propaganda films or novels, except as lesbians who play the role of "sheng nu" (chinese government name for femcels, yes its a thing in china lol) who always act weird and toxic and jealous of the AMWF lead couple of the movie.

now if you were to ask anyone whether china was being racist, most whites would answer: 100% yes.

but thats exactly what they are doing to asians right now.

I’m not a religious person but the more I think about it the more it makes sense. I know a lot of Asians that convert or go to Asian church. It’s basically saying hey this white dude is your god and you have to worship him. What you guys think?

https://youtube.com/shorts/IiaTPtr_sgM?feature=shared

”Are we Chinos or Latinos?”

**So many strawman Filam videos like this are coming out conditioning Filipinos for decades

Firstly, She said Filipino lumpia (which is Chinese spring rolls ) is just Mexican Taquito lol... same with pancit which is Chinese noodles

Proceeds to say Filipino food/Mexican food is the same. I can assure you it's completely different not similar at all in the slightest. A Mexican can visit any Filipino food market and won't find anything similar while an Indonesian will find an abundance of shared dishes in common even Chinese people can

Filipinos being "family oriented" somehow makes us so similar? I guess all Asians are similar to Mexicans then. Being family oriented isn't exclusive to just Mexicans and Filipinos...

The part where he said were both brown asf and like boxing, okay...

Overall, Filipino culture is much more similar to countries like Indonesia not Mexico.

Both cultures are vastly different with the only similarity being Catholicism, names, and a few shared loan words

This video went viral and has 16,000 likes with the number 1 audience being in the Philippines None of these people in this video are Filipino but apparently the woman is??

example:

https://preview.redd.it/44of8nkina7e1.png?width=206&format=png&auto=webp&s=22d2d991b99c3c45cc0d80a542e25bd99c5de950

Hey sorry if this post is a few weeks late, I wanted to wait until it was certain our Asian brothers won! Both of these elections started off with our brothers losing, but as the vote count kept going on the tides started to turn in their favor! Both of these brothers had significantly less funding than their opponents. The case of Derek Tran is a big deal because this Viet bro beat a Lu who used Sinophobia/anti China rhetoric to get Vietnamese to vote for her. Steven Choi's election was a big deal because it was the first time in over 40 years that a California state senate seat turned republican, also he had much less funding than his opponent.

Let's keep on voting for Asian bros so we see more Asian male faces in leadership government positions and on TV.

Let's keep on voting for Asian bros so it sends a message that Asian Votes Matter.

Let's keep on voting for Asian bros so that we can empower them to empower us!!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/27/derek-tran-democrat-california-house-race

https://www.kcra.com/article/california-state-senate-seat-flips-republican-orange-county-choi/63015077

Update: a reddit bro also mentioned Senator Andy Kim from New Jersey, the race wasn't as tight as the two other Asian bros, but winning is all that matters!
https://newjerseymonitor.com/2024/12/09/andy-kim-is-now-new-jerseys-newest-senator/

Update #2: another Asian brutha mentioned Korean Dave Min winning in another California Election
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/democrat-dave-min-defeats-scott-baugh-critical-california-house-race-rcna176912

Shameless plug - help support other Asians!!!

Tell Asian high schoolers that they will get more college aid if they show low income on their FAFSA 
https://www.reddit.com/r/aznidentity/comments/tppcdf/update_i_brought_millions_of_into_our_asian/

Ideas on how to Support Asian Businesses 
https://www.reddit.com/r/aznidentity/comments/qsvna3/support_asian_businesses_with_our_asian_wealth/

Ideas for positive Asian activism (couldn't link to my Aznmasc post but it's on my profile)