Ming Long on the bamboo ceiling - Asian-Australians’ workplace barrier
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Asians are discriminated against in America, Britain, New Zealand, and Australia. You’re nothing more than a coolie 2.0 and you are being used just like the Chinese and Indian coolies 100+ years ago by “honorable white people”. When will Asians learn that whites will not ever allow you to have power. Why don’t you start working among yourselves to build your own commercial giants instead of building massive wealth as a coolie for people who will just use, abuse, and spit you out?
You need to realize that these companies need you. The technicians, analysts, and low level managers are the ones doing the majority of the hard work. It’s you people who are most suited to building your own competitors.
Ming Long on the bamboo ceiling: Asian-Australians’ workplace barrier:
http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/careers/asianaustralians-cant-be-themselves-if-they-want-to-succeed/news-story/265a6aedb58893fe9563d3dc6f3fb69aAsian Australians ‘can’t be themselves’ if they want to succeed
We often hear about the invisible glass ceiling women have to break through to rise to the top in business. But the “bamboo ceiling” stopping Asian people getting ahead in Australian workplaces is proving an even more intractable problem for our economy.
While people of Asian ethnic origin make up 10 per cent of the Australian population, they hold less than two per cent of senior executive positions in the country’s top 200 companies.
She says Asian employees, especially if they are also women, are expected to be quiet, unthreatening and good at maths type roles. If they don’t conform, they may be labelled as aggressive. See this great study at the bottom.
“In a meeting with other executives where you are clearly the stand out odd person, the stereotyping then comes in.
“When you don’t play to that stereotype it means people don’t like you as much. “Getting into leadership, there is a sense you need to have people who want to work with you. That means you can’t be yourself.
“I really try to stay away from stereotyping people because I think it’s dangerous. I think it pigeonholes people and it doesn’t allow you to have vision for what that person can become.”Aren’t Australian companies run by “egalitarian white men”?
Where are the Asian feminists to fight against white men for their racist patriarchy and misogynistic oppression?
There are a high number of Asian Australians working in major companies, it’s advancement that’s the problem.
A 2014 report by the Diversity Council of Australia found that Asian people are overrepresented in entry level positions, but the numbers thin out further up the management chain.
Ms Long says many assume that people who look like her “don’t want to be in leadership or that they don’t aspire to more in their careers.”
This systemic discrimination also affects indigenous people, Muslims and the LGBT community.
Workers who are different in some way “have to be twice as good” at what they do just to be seen as equal, Ms Long explains.
“People will say, ‘but we are looking for merit,’ but that’s a trap too … Merit is a trap. It really depends on who’s defining it. “I want people to judge me as a human, not as a woman, not as an Asian.”
Why are these anti-Asian stereotypes so dangerous? Here’s what one researcher had to say
Our research shows that racial stereotypes of East Asians in North America are prescriptive in addition to being descriptive and are likely to serve to keep East Asians in subordinate organizational positions and undesirable social roles in the workplace. The perception that East Asians are high in competence and low in warmth and dominance is likely to help perpetuate the idea that East Asians are ideal as subordinate employees, suited for technical competence positions, but are unqualified to be leaders and managers (e.g., Sy et al., 2010). In addition, the prescription that East Asians be nondominant helps to reinforce the glass (or “bam boo”) ceiling. Keeping East Asians “cold” by punishing them when they are warm will help sustain the stereotype of “yellow peril” and justify excluding them from affiliative social networks crucial for career success. Keeping East Asians nondominant should encourage this competent “model minority” to stay in its place. Only through awareness of these stereotypes and how they function can we begin to overcome their deleterious effects.
Prescriptive Stereotypes and Workplace Consequences for East Asians in North America
http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/Berdahl & Min CDEMP 2012.pdfSome things to think about for Asians who think the West is full of “equality, all men are created equal, and egalitarian white gentlemen”…