Maclean's "Too Asian" article: Challenging Racism in the Media

This is a piece that I wrote for an online blog for my "Ethnicity in a Global Perspective" class in regards to race. After attending an Anti-Asian Racism meeting to address the huge response that the Maclean's article received.
 
A recent article published in the November issue of Maclean's entitled "Too Asian" has caused a lot of controversy both nationally and specifically on the UVIC Campus. In short, the article suggests that there are too many "Asians" at top Canadian Universities, in turn making them "too competitive" for white students to keep up and hence having the result of segregating the student population along racial lines. I have heard many people debating the article and it got an enormous negative response from many readers who found it to be highly offensive and racist. The outrage was to the point that an ad-hock meeting was organised on campus in order to discuss the article and this week. A "teach-in" was organised in order to create both awareness of the article and the issues around Asian racism as well as aiming to create much needed discourse around this subject.

The article opens with the voices of two white female Canadian students; Alexandra and Rachel who are both graduates of private schools in the Toronto area and had decided that they would not attend the University of Toronto because "too many Asians" attended this University. The writers then go on to label U of T as an "Asian School"; meaning a school "that is so academically focused that some students feel they can no longer have fun" (Findlay & Köhler). The article continues to say that due to Asians being "strivers, high-achievers and single-minded in their approach to university" (Findlay & Köhler) that white students feel they can no longer compete academically with these students for places in the top schools and to do so would require "a sacrifice of time and freedom they're not willing to make" (Findlay & Köhler). I personally found it laughable at times and honestly ridiculous that this argument was deemed worthy of print. Isn't the point of university to gain an education rather than a social life?

I found the whole article to have quite racist undertones and so many aspects of it were problematic for me. Almost too many problems to mention; numerous implicit racist assumptions,  the reproduction of stereotypes and the disturbing re-emergence of old ideologies regarding WASP privilege. Firstly, the broad, sweeping generalizations of both "Asians" and "Whites" that were perpetuated. McLean's used Asian in this sense mostly in reference to East Asia; China, Japan and Korea. This reference to Asia, as if it were some homogeneous entity, rather than the culturally, linguistically and ethnically diverse landmass that it is, I found to be quite ignorant. There is an overt use of stereotypes regarding both Asians and whites; that of the overachieving, quiet Asian student who is great at maths and science, but lacks necessary social skills versus the free-spirited, hard partying white kids who choose schools based soley on the social lives they hope attain. What is problematic here is the blatant racialization of both White and Asian students, perpetuating stereotypes that can be damaging and limiting, especially for marginalized groups.

These assumptions are indeed offensive and problematic, the argument at times is blatantly racist and really quite redundant; most people who live within a multicultural society would understand that people do not fit stereotypes and you can obviously not make generalizations like this about whole groups of people. If you 'live' race on a daily basis, through proximity and social interaction, then arguments such as this one honestly just sound quite ridiculous. I would hope that most of us know that not all Asian students are great at maths or computers, or are one homogeneous group, nor do we think that white students choose schools soley based on social life. I know I certainly didn't and neither did most of the people i attend school with. My fellow students of European background work very hard at school and I could definitely apply the argument of them being "strivers and high-achievers".
 
A major argument presented in the article is that Asian students are resented for taking the spots of white students. This argument to me holds the assumption then that these places should be set aside for white Canadians? This entire article embodies the notion of white privilege, a notion that is so frequently ignored in race discussions and was most certainly ignored in this article. It highlights more than anything, the sense of entitlement of white Canadians and the privileges afforded to them simply based on their race. I don't want to sound like I'm pointing the finger or playing the blame game here. I too, being white and British have been afforded the luxury of not really having to think about my race often. However, it is not about blame, it is about recognizing such unconscious and implicit assumptions in our daily lives. For me, this is what anthropology is about; understanding that we are all so completely enculturated into ways of being and thinking, we all make judgments based on our culture, our race, our socio-economic status etc and I think to suggest that we can ever be completely free from such implicit judgments is  unrealistic. However, educating ourselves, learning to recognize such judgments when we make them and then thinking critically about them once we have can be the roots of change in all of us.

Even the title of the piece, "too Asian" is so laden with this white privilege ideology; saying  that something is "too Asian" implies it is a deviation from the norm, the norm of course, once again, being white. Tying in with the concept of white privilege is the idea that universities are becoming "too Asian" and too segregated racially. This holds the implicit assumption then that universities are assumed to be white spaces, with the need for predominately white students; anything else is troubling? Rather disturbingly then, this all leads back to ideas of white racial privilege and superiority which I think the article clearly highlights; the common 'us' vs 'them' argument ('us' being white Canadians) and the assumption that Canadian-ness equates whiteness. This is of course very blatant in the hyphenated forms used for non white Canadians; Indo-Canadian, Asian-Canadian, even the native population finds themselves marked in this way as Aboriginal-Canadians. Canadian (without hyphenation) then just seems to refer to people of European decent, ignoring and hiding the fact that everyone besides the aboriginal population is foreign to this land and just as Canadian, or in fact non Canadian as each other.
 
This all made me think back to a comment which a classmate made at the beginning of the term, a comment that really struck a chord with me. She mentioned that on a regular basis people ask her where she is from and are simply not content with the answer that she is Canadian. It of course ties back to the notion of white Canadian-ness and sadly it seems that Canadians who are visible ethnic minorities within Canada are constantly having to justify their status as Canadians in a way that white Canadians never have to. Additionally, the article ignores all the other aspects that come hand in hand with racism. Racism and prejudge based on skin-colour never stand alone of course, it intersects and is tangled with other prejudices; classism, sexism, ideas about gender and etc.
 
Obviously reading articles like this critically, especially when using an anthropological framework help to examine and expose deep set ideologies that may be overlooked under everyday circumstances. For instance, the implicit assumption about Canadian-ness equating whiteness, who 'belongs' in Canada and what being Canadian really is, assumptions which I believe to be highly problematic and damaging within Canadian society. The idea of not recognising white privilege and and of the problematic assumption that Canadian-ness equates whiteness was what I found most troubling in this article.
 
-Shannon Turner-Riley
December 1st, 2010

Findlay, Stephanie & Köhler, Nicholas.
    2010 "Too Asian". Maclean's, November 10.