As the Asian American population — the nation’s fastest-growing racial group — gains a larger and larger presence, it still faces persistent discrimination, according to several surveys and reports.
But the form of that discrimination doesn’t always appear in traditionally noticeable ways — sometimes it’s clear acts of hate, while other times it’s workplace or school bullying, and other times, subtle “microaggressions” or “accentism.”
Small Acts, Big Influences
One particularly disturbing form of discrimination has become known as the microaggression. These small acts are “the everyday, subtle, intentional — and oftentimes unintentional — interactions or behaviors that communicate some sort of bias toward historically marginalized groups,” according to Professor Kevin Nadal at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. This is becoming more common to a population once called the “invisible” population — an other covert form of discrimination.
These microaggressions are so common in day-to-day interactions of Asian Americans — who now make up about 21 million people — that they often become overlooked and unacknowledged, according to experts. Professor Derald Wing Sue at Columbia University has said that “this contemporary form of racism is many times more problematic, damaging, and injurious to persons of color than overt racist acts.”
Experts have said they believe this treatment can affect people of color by limiting their means to earn a living, harm self-esteem, and damage their psychological well-being.
Many Asian Americans Feel the Harm
A large Pew Survey involving more than 7,000 adults of Asian descent found that 57% say discrimination is a major problem; 68% of Asian adults living in the U.S. submitted that people were constantly mispronouncing their names in daily interactions with strangers.
An Asian American woman in her twenties explained to Sampan that when first moving to the U.S., people would make fun of her name, mispronounce it, misspell it, or not even bother to acknowledge her. She was tired of having to pronounce her name over and over again for people to understand or be able to say it, until eventually, she changed her name into an “English” one and even shortened it to two syllables. Yet, at coffee shops, or conversations with strangers, people would still mispronounce or misspell it. Similar to many other Asian American experiences, she opens up about her struggle of wanting to be true to herself and her identity, while feeling the need to please society to belong and make it easier for everyone else.
Not only do Asian Americans experience violent hate crimes that were exacerbated by the pandemic, but Pew’s latest study emphasizes that they also face stereotyping and daily acts of discrimination that increase their difficulty of living a normal life. Asians were directly discriminated against, with 40% of them reporting that they received poorer service than other people at restaurants or stores, 39% of people acted as if they did not speak English, and 37% experienced someone telling them they should go back to their home country.
A total of 78% of the Asian adults in the Pew study say they’ve been treated as a foreigner in some way, even if they were born in the U.S.
Recently, more light has been shone on research studies on how Asian American women specifically experience intersectional oppression in academics and professional workplaces. The stereotypes of Asian American women being “passive, sexually compliant, and exotic” conflict with dominant American views of work ethic and leadership, thus excluding them from promotion and leadership opportunities. This racial bias perceived as a lack of competence compared with White women in workplaces is further magnified by the discrimination of Asian American accents.
In a survey conducted by Behavioural Therapy New York, where authors, colleagues, and other Asian American women academics reported incidents of racism, many reported that they felt discrimination through the idea of speaking with a non-American accent being equated with a lack of intelligence.
“Asian Accent”
Another persistent type of discrimination that has grown more recognized recently is “accentism” — the discriminatory or unfair behavior centered on someone’s accent or language use. A 20-year English as a Second Language teacher at Boston’s Asian American Civic Association acknowledges that “accentism is definitely a real thing that can be a professional barrier to people. I work with people here who have very strong accents, and some people use that as a sign that they are limited in their ability. And that just simply isn’t true.”
“It is really hard for me to work on my accent. I should work harder, but accents are a beautiful thing,” one female employee told Sampan. “If people here in the West and East have different accents, why can’t we have our own accents? What’s wrong with being different?”
But “I often think that if I spoke perfect English, people would treat me differently. Things or incidents that have happened maybe wouldn’t have happened if I looked or talked differently.”
