Word: asianized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Unfortunately, instead of providing evidence that stereotypes are disintegrating, we can't help but get the impression that nothing at all has changed. For instance, are Asian Americans' motivations for pursuing a career in medicine changing? Are they breaking out of that mold that seems always to have constrained them to Biochemistry? The answer, of course...
...tragic sacrifice with which some students justify their pre-med choices simply perpetuate the rampant "stereotypes that have plagued all Asian-Americans." It is very filially pious to honor your father by going into medicine because, as one student put it, "My father really wants me to go into medicine. He's given up too much in absolute terms for me...It'd be too cold not to honor that wish." It is quite another matter to claim that this mentality somehow breaks any mold...
...guilt laid upon these students from their parents and peers weren't enough, some even transfer that guilt to all Asians in general. One student claimed that she felt "a very real duty to her race" to study ethnicity. She let the burden of her race weigh too heavily upon her own shoulders: "I think whether of not you want that responsibility [to effect change for Asian Americans], you have it." Again, the hapless Asian paradigm of self-sacrifice for the collective. Where is the thought behind the decisions, the motivations coming from within, not being driven by the expectations...
...constrain ourselves to live out the roles that fate deals us--"I am Chinese, so I must study medicine or ethnicity because that's my responsibility to my family and to my race"--or do we define ourselves, and in so doing, enrich the aggregate definition of being Asian American? Are we truly interested in breaking the mold, or merely being better able to rationalize it? Rationalizing is what these alleged "mold breakers...
...believe very strongly in a responsibility to help others in one's own group by providing good role models and support. That's not what is being done here. Instead of good role models, we get the same tired, stereotypical Asian tragedies. The issues of linking ethnic identity with life choices should be recognized for what they are. They should be addressed and explored honestly, instead of being insultingly passed off as evidence of Asian-American mold-breaking. We're just further deepening the mold here, instead of smashing it to bits...