Eggs, Twinkies, and Ethnic Stereotypes

非常好的英语阅读文章Eggs, Twinkies, and Ethnic Stereotyes

Who am I?

For Asian-American students, the answer is a diligent, hardworking and intelligent young person. But living up to this reputation has secretly haunted me.

The labeling starts in elementary school. It’s not uncommon for a teacher to remark, “You’re Asian, you’re supposed to do well in math.” The underlying message is, “You’re Asian and you’re supposed to be smarter.”

Not to say being labeled intelligent isn’t flattering, because it is, or not to deny that basking in the limelight of being top of my class isn’t ego-boosting, because frankly it is. But at a certain point, the pressure became crushing. I felt as if doing poorly on my next spelling quiz would stain the exalted reputation of all Asian students forever.

So I continued to be an academic overachiever, as were my friends. By junior high school I started to believe I was indeed smarter. I became condescending toward non-Asians. I was a bigot; all my friends were Asians. The thought of intermingling occurred rarely it ever.

My elitist opinion of Asian students changed, however, in high school. As a student at what is considered one of the nation’s most competitive science and math schools, I found that being on top is no longer an easy feat.

I quickly learned that Asian students were not smarter. How could I ever have believed such a thing? All around me are intelligent, ambitious people who are not only Asian but white, black and Hispanic.

Superiority complexes aside, the problem of social segregation still exists in the schools. With few exceptions, each race socializes only with its “own kind”. Students see one another in the classroom, but outside the classroom there remains distinct segregation.

Racist lingo abounds. An Asian student who socializes only with other Asians is believed to be An Asian Supremacist or, at the very least, arrogant and closed off. Yet an Asian student who socializes only with whites is called a “ twinkie”, one who is yellow on the outside but white on the inside.

A white teen-ager who socializes only with whites is thought of as prejudiced, yet one who socializes with Asians is considered an “egg”, white on the outside and yellow on the inside.

These culinary classifications go on endlessly, needless to say, leaving many confused, and leaving many more fearful than ever of social experimentation. Because the stereotypes are accepted almost unanimously, they are rarely challenged. Many

非常好的英语阅读文章Eggs, Twinkies, and Ethnic Stereotyes

develop harmful stereotypes of entire races. We label people before we even know them.

Labels learned at a young age later metamorphose into more visible acts of racism. For example, my parents once accused and ultimately fire a Puerto Rican cashier, believing she had stolen $200 from the register at their grocery store. They later learned it was a mistake. An Asian shopkeeper nearby once beat a young Hispanic youth who worked there with a baseball bat because he believed the boy to be lazy and dishonest.

We all hold misleading stereotypes of people that limit us as individuals in that we cheat ourselves out of benefits different cultures can contribute. We can grow and learn from each culture whether it be Chinese, Korean or African-American.

Just recently some Asian boys in neighborhood were attacked by a group of young white boys who have christened themselves the Master Race. Rather than being angered by this act, I feel pity for this generation that lives in a state of bigotry.

It may be too late for our parents’ generation to accept that each person can only be judged for the characteristics that set him or her apart as an individual. We, however, can do better.

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