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| 1986f | (500) Today, it is much easier for Asian Americans to get better jobs and find better housing. There is much less discrimination. Asian American families value education. As a result, Asian Americans have gone to college and become doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, and engineers. Outstanding Chinese Americans include the scientists Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics. I. M. (Ieah Ming) Pei is one of the country's most important architects. Japanese Americans have made equally outstanding achievements. Samuel T. Hayakawa of California and Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii were elected senators. Isamu Noguchi is a world-famous sculptor. Seiji Ozawa is one of the country's leading orchestra conductors. |
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| 1992f | (638) [Picture] Isamu Noguchi, one of the greatest sculptors of the 20th century, was born in Los Angeles but taken to Japan when he was two. He called this sleek sculpture piece "California Scenario." It was completed in 1982 and covers 1.6 acres in Costa Mesa, California. |
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| 1996a | (943) The Wall Street Journal reported in 1985 that "the same companies that pursue them for technical jobs often shun them when filling managerial and executive positions." Hard work has overcome some, though by no means all of these prejudices. One survey indicated that while the average American student spent 19.6 hours a week on academic work, the average Japanese American spent 32.6 hours and Chinese American, 40.4. Some Asian groups earn more than other ethnic groups, as well as full-time American wage earners, in part because many immigrant families brought business and educational experience to America, along with a powerful work ethic. A "model minority." Such success has led the media often to stereotype Asians as a "model minority" in America; yet the experience of Asian immigrants remains widely diverse, encompassing high-income Filipino American doctors and low-income agricultural laborers, Japanese Americans who are poor and elderly as well as those who are younger, upwardly mobile technicians. Ethnic tensions, made worse by job losses and an American trade deficit with Asian countries, gave rise to scattered acts of violence. During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Korean shops were often the targets of looters and arsonists. |
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| 1998a | (1201) Even successful new immigrants encountered subtle forms of discrimination. "Many Asian Americans hoping to climb the corporate ladder face an arduous ascent," reported the Wall Street Journal. "Ironically the same companies that pursue them for technical jobs often shun them when filling managerial and executive positions." Hard work has overcome some, though by no means all, of these prejudices. Many immigrant families have brought business and educational experience to America, as well as a powerful work ethic. Japanese American wages are 10 percent above white wages and 50 percent higher than African American and Hispanic wages. Such success led the media to stereotype Asians as a "model minority," yet the experience of Asian immigrants remains widely diverse, encompassing high-income Filipino-American doctors and low-income agricultural laborers, Japanese Americans who are poor and elderly as well as those who are younger, upwardly mobile technicians. Ethnic tensions, made worse by job losses and an American trade deficit with Asian countries, gave rise to scattered acts of violence. During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Korean shops were often the targets of looters and arsonists. |
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| 1998c | (1095-6) The Asian immigrants, following a pattern established decades before, sought better and better opportunities for their children, and in California they became the largest group of entering students at a number of college campuses. Sometimes the media highlighted the successes of Asian immigrants, particularly in contrast to the problems encountered by other groups. In 1986, U.S. News & World Report noted Asian American advances in a cover story, while Newsweek ran a lead article on "Asian Americans: A 'Model Minority,'" and Fortune called them "America's Super Minority." Asian Americans were proud of the exposure but pointed out that many members of the working class still struggled for a foothold. In the Chinatowns of San Francisco and Los Angeles, 40 to 50 percent of the workers were employed in the ill-paid service sector or garment industry; in New York's Chinatown the figure was close to 70 percent. Chinese immigrant women, in particular, often had little choice but to work as seamstresses, just as women from other nationalities had earlier in the century. |
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| 1999b | (953) A "model minority." The relative success of many Asian Americans has led the media often to stereotype them as a "model minority"; yet the experience of Asian immigrants remains widely diverse, encompassing high-income Filipino-American doctors and low-income agricultural laborers, Japanese-Americans who are poor and elderly as well as those who are younger, upwardly mobile technicians. Ethnic tensions, made worse by job losses and an American trade deficit with Asian countries, gave rise periodically to acts of violence. During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, for example, Korean shops were often the targets of looters and arsonists. |
| 1999c | (1022-3) By 1990, the figure had grown to 3 percent, and Asians were nearly half of all immigrants coming to America. Most came as families and tended to cluster in ethnic communities in major urban areas, especially in Hawai'i and the Pacific coast region. Some were highly educated, had marketable skills, and found economic success as engineers, medical professionals, and owners of small businesses. Chang-Lin Tien experienced such a success. Born in China, he became a professor of mechanical engineering and eventually chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley in 1990. The success of so many Asian Americans -- they are among the nation's most prosperous and best-educated minority -- has caused them to be considered a "model minority." But this stereotype ignores many variables, including levels of education, dates of arrival, and ethnicity. Although immigrants from India and Japan have higher high school graduation rates than whites, those from China, the Philippines, and Indochina have lower ones. Many immigrants from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia arrived with few possessions, little education, and few skills. Mired in poverty, they frequently had difficulty assimilating into American society and faced racial hostility. Along the Gulf coast, whites fearing economic competition attacked Vietnamese shrimpers. Many Asian Americans believe that a number of universities, under pressure from whites and from non-Asian minority groups, established quotas to limit the admission of Asians to professional and graduate programs. The consequence of growing numbers and anti-Asian prejudice convinced many to become more active in local, state, and national politics and to adopt the term Asian American to stress inclusiveness rather than ethnic diversity. Still, as one Asian American commented, "no one can claim to know what Asian-American ethnicity is or what it will become." Despite Asians' success and assimilation into American society, concluded one Asian-American activist, "there is a stereotype that Asians are foreigners even though they've been here for many generations." |