While these are mere averages, I hope that it encourages Taiwanese Americans to embrace who they are. I feel like I could easily give an hour long presentation on this, but for now, just lend me five minutes of your time.

When you take a look at the Taiwanese American (TA) community, we make such a big impact. Fashion Designers. Entrepreneurs (Garmin, Nautica, Yahoo, Zappos..so much more). YouTube Celebrities. Musicians. Artists. Journalists. Scientists. Lawyers. We have the potential to be game changers.

Undoubtedly, the two figures I have put up are connected. Higher education has a positive correlation with higher income, and true enough I’m lucky enough to see pretty much all of my TA peers attend college. Sure, we can’t help what kind of situation we are thrown in when we’re born, but the tragedy of the inequity happens when we don’t utilize all that we’re given. I believe that with knowledge comes power, and with power comes responsibility. Food for thought: Perhaps this suggests that we should be leading the Asian American movement.

Previous “Taiwanese Pride” drew from being Taiwanese. What I hope to see is a “new” pride in being Taiwanese American. I’ve already seen the TA community do great things for the American society as a whole, and I’ve been waiting for my chance to do the same.

To be honest, I see so much potential in my peers, but our generation’s nationwide TA network is weaker than the past’s. This is why I joined ITASA and have really appreciated being appointed National Public Relations Director. My mission is to give students the opportunity to connect with each other, which helps us (as a community) begin to realize our untapped potential. Questions?

Given these statistics, shouldn’t the takeaway be that Taiwanese-Americans have a duty to confront their own privilege within the Asian-American community? Taiwanese-American pride is worthless if it’s just a means of shoring up our own (inherited) privilege and to perpetuate the same Old World racism/classism.

The idea that this means we should be leading the movement or capitalizing on our success is sort of abhorrent to me. I think what we really need to do is take a step back, examine why we’re achieving to this extent, and mobilize to help form a more inclusive and representative Asian-American movement.

(via fascinasians)

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7 months ago