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ASIAMS.NET |
ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES
Is Boston the AA Intellectual Mecca?
he significance of the greater Boston area's AA community derives not from its position as the nation's 13th largest (250,000, accounting for 6% of the area's 4.1 million) but from its unparalleled concentration of elite academics and scholars. The gravitational pull of institutions like MIT, Harvard, Brandeis, Northeastern, Tufts and Wellesley acts more compellingly on Asians than on other segments of the American population. They account for a stunning 20% of the 250,000 students attending the area's 60 colleges and universities.
AA Intellectual Mecca?
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A local Asian icon is the late An Wang, a Harvard alumnus whose 1951 invention of magnetic core memory enabled the computer revolution. Wang Laboratories has now faded into a cautionary tale of the perils of arrogance and ill-conceived family succession, but downtown Boston's gleaming Wang Center for the Performing Arts remains a magnificent memorial to the possibilities of Asian academic elitism. Rival MIT has the highest concentration of Asians (30%) outside of California and Hawaii -- as well as academia's highest suicide rate (10 since 1990).
This intellectual pressure cooker has spawned a culture of technological innovation and risktaking that has produced many of the seeds for the global tech sectors, including the vast corridor along Boston's own Route 128 comprising 5,000 tech companies employing over 200,000.
The Boston area's love-hate relationship with Asians began in 1875 when a small number of Chinese began pitching tents on land created several decades earlier by a land fill of the old South Cove mud flats. By the turn of the century several hundred Chinese had established a budding Chinatown of over two dozen businesses. In 1902, after the Chinese Exclusion Act was extended, police and immigration agents arrested 250 Chinese for not carrying alien registration papers. Despite sporadic hostility, Boston's Chinatown received steady patronage from locals. By 1931 it had grown to nearly a hundred establishments supporting 1,200.
Today Chinatown occupies 32 acres along Harrison Avenue between South Station and the Boston Commons. It has become one of Boston's most vibrant areas, with over 200 businesses that spill out into the theater district. Its several dozen restaurants are operated not only by Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan, but also Vietnamese, Coreans, Thais, Filipinos and other Asian nationalities. Thanks to social and cultural activism emanating from the local universities, Chinatown enjoys support from many energetic organizations dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for its mostly recent-immigrant residents. It has become a centerpiece of Boston's efforts at cultural preservation and urban renewal but for most of the area's AA residents, Chinatown is a hot meal and an occasional touchstone to a heritage that is invisible in their suburban neighborhoods.
The young Asians drawn to Boston by the reputations of its elite colleges have mixed feelings about the area's post-graduation hospitality. Some suspect the area's businesses of discriminating against Asians. Others are less than comfortable with the perceived attitudes of locals. Few Asians who attend college in Boston settle there.
Is greater Boston the Asian American intellectual mecca? Or is it just third-base for ambitious heavyhitters?
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WHAT YOU SAY
[This page is closed to new input. --Ed.]
(Updated
Tuesday, Apr 1, 2008, 06:10:00 PM)
To NewYawker
You are SO right: during my first year in Boston University, I was naive enough not to notice any racism around me...but starting the second year, I couldn't help but notice it...
I am SO happy to be in Honolulu right now, the polar opposite of the blue-collar white bastion that is Boston
Regards
-Benji
Benji
dragonscorpio@yahoo.com
Monday, April 29, 2002 at 16:42:48 (PDT)
Personally, I think Downtown Boston where Chinatown and Tuft's medical campus is located is extremely run down.
I think the area between Cambridge and Boston is somewhat run down also with sprouts of student rentals.
The subways are a joke.
I think the overall attitude to asian is good in the city of Boston. As for the job market it is kind of small there. Most Techies head out West. Most people pursuing finance head to NYC. Very few people want to stay where they spent the last 4 years anyways.
The Big Dig sucks. Traffic still stinks.
AC Dropout
Monday, April 29, 2002 at 12:56:34 (PDT)
The sad truth is that Boston is an overgrown college town that depends on all those colleges for its economic survival. I'm willing to bet that the colleges are the area's biggest industry! All my AA friends going to school there are customers who bring in the cash, but when they're done spending, they aren't welcome to stay and find a job unless it's at one of the colleges. Bostonians are some of the most racist people in the country. Look at how hard they fought school busing in the 70s.
Boston can be fun your first year 'cause there are a lot of bright-eyed Asians there and a lot of parties for them, but that all goes out the window as the pressure starts mounting.
NewYawker
Monday, April 29, 2002 at 07:55:22 (PDT)
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