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GOLDSEA |
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)
TSJ:
Basically us Cali transplants in New England take one of two paths: some just bring all their clothes from home, maintain the Cali style of dress, but buy a ridiculously heavy wool coat or insanely puffy jacket to layer over it and some long underwear to layer under it, others with more money start up a new wardrobe which they're never gonna bring home cuz it's completely useless outside of New England.
Beantown's gonna make you fart:
"If you can be part of an AA clique or blend in with the white Americans and international crowd, that's great--otherwise, you're going to feel alienated"
Hmm, never noticed it that much. Sure in Cali there's lots more AAs, but also a bigger proportion of them going through the whole searching for their roots phase cuz they don't know much about their ancestral cultures or languages. There's kind of a continuum, and people of all types seem to be in an Asian clique, including those who don't seem to have much claim to the name Asian aside from their face. I don't find as much internal segregation.
This is in contrast to New England, where you get a sharply quantized scale. AAs got 4 options
1) you're totally whitewashed, or you just got sick of the incessant categorization, and avoid the Asian cliques completely.
2) you're moderately whitewashed and hang with the portion of the Asian clique which avoids the FOBs/internationals
3) you have a decent level of functionality in culture/language and hang with the portion of the Asian clique which associates with the FOBs
4) you join the FOB clique
People know which category you are and don't associate much with those who are too different from them ...
T.H. Lien
Wednesday, May 08, 2002 at 10:43:19 (PDT)
This message could belong in several areas in Goldsea. I chose to place it here.
I hate Boston. The weather sucks. The people are rude, standoffish, conservative, and apparently racist. The last one is the hardest to know for sure. Some people say it's just the minorities who misinterpret the "normal" cold Bostonian attitude for prejudice and racism. I'm not one of those people. It seems as if there is a racial hierarchy here. I'm just going to mentioned a *few* aspects of this.
Most of the Asian girls seem to only like white guys and diss on Asian guys. You will see many AF/WM couples per day, but almost never an AM/WF couple. If you're an AM and walk around with a WF, even a friend, you get many stares. Kind of makes it hard to even befriend a WF. It really sucks. Plus, it's obvious how everyone accepts Asian girls way more than Asian guys. Asian girls are much more socialized into the mainstream than Asian guys. Sure, there are other factors involved, but the end result: it's great if you're an AF who only likes WM's and don't mind fully assimilating (and, at the extreme, pretending you're a white girl) even if for the most part your AM brothers are left behind; if you're an AM, especially a shy one, it sucks to be you--get out!
If you're still in high school and deciding on which college to bless with your presence and if you care about AA issues, try to go to Stanford rather than Harvard, Caltech or Harvey Mudd rather than MIT, UCSF rather than Harvard Med, UC schools rather than other state schools, etc. My personal belief is that it's better to concentrate the AA student population where the AA community is already well established, rather than diluting ourselves. Concentrating our numbers in the major metro areas is important, especially given how fragmented our community is. The numbers in California are not yet so high that we should worry about places like Boston more. You're only one person, but every person counts.
Ever been to the universities and colleges here in the Boston area? Being around the 18-22 year old crowd with a mix of many foreign Asian students (mostly grad students) and AA's from around the country (so you are sure to get a lot of "whitewashed" AF's and, to a lesser extent, AM's), the invisible social/racial hierarchy is so heavy in the air. If you can be part of an AA clique or blend in with the white Americans and international crowd, that's great--otherwise, you're going to feel alienated.
AA's who have attended Harvard and MIT have told me how much they dislike it here and how cold the atmosphere is. And they're not talking about the weather!
Beantown's going to make you fart
Tuesday, May 07, 2002 at 19:07:36 (PDT)
[A copy of this post will be placed in the Ivies page. --Ed]
How do people survive the cold?! I'm from California, and I doubt I would last more than a couple minutes in that bitter chill. We get uncomfortable when it drops below 50 degrees around here!
Toi San Jai
Eric@KristinKreuk.net
Tuesday, May 07, 2002 at 15:32:55 (PDT)
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