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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)
New Yawker,
Nothing in your post suggests that you've actually ever lived in Boston. So I'm assuming that you're talking out your ass and trashing a city you don't really know.
What's the matter--did you get rejected from a Boston-area school?
You obviously didn't read the article above. Yeah, there's a lot of colleges--and that's not a bad thing. A ton of IT and biotech companies are located in Boston for that very reason. Maybe New Yorkers prefer to sell crack and beg. To each his own.
As for racism, any big city in the US will have it's share of racists. Shall we conclude from that Diallo/NYPD incident that New Yorkers are some of the most racist people in the country?
Wicked Cool
Wednesday, May 01, 2002 at 02:45:11 (PDT)
What I always found most amusing about my experiences in Boston was the way NYers would always bash the city by comparing it to NYC. I was born and raised in Boston and love the town dearly (even with all its faults), but even I can recognize the Boston is no NYC. But get real for a moment! NYC is one of, if not THE premier city in the entire world. Boston is puny in comparison. The whole metro area is only some 3.5 million. There is no Manhattan, no MOMA, no Flushing, no Wall Street, no Village and yes the subway shuts down after midnight and the Big Dig is increasingly loathesome.
But look at apples and apples for a moment. Boston compares very nicely to individual boroughs of New York (other than Manhattan). We got Staten Island and the Bronx beat hands down. I think we hold our own against Queens and Brooklyn too.
Boston isn't much when compared to NYC as a whole, but what city really does well in that kind of comparison? LA? Hongkong? London? Tokyo? Boston isn't in that category.
Man of Lha-sa(mancha)
Tuesday, April 30, 2002 at 08:37:18 (PDT)
Boston is a clear cut city. People like boston or people hate boston. Boston does not have gray area like California. If you know what you want in life. Boston is a great city to study and meet interesting people from around the world. Boston is a great testing ground for Asians or Asian Americans. Knowing about there cultural roots.
From Massachusetts
Massachusetts
Tuesday, April 30, 2002 at 08:32:57 (PDT)
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