Who are Asian Americans? “Cultural Competency” and Relevance for Teaching

Asian Languages

Eliza Noh, Ph.D. & Tu-Uyen Nguyen, Ph.D.NRCAL PD Session

Feb. 3, 2015

Japanese American Statistical Portrait

• Population: 1.3 million in US, 7.5% of the AA population, 6th largest AA ethnic group

• Nativity: 32% of adults are foreign-born (compared to 74% of all AAs), 27% in CA are foreign-born

• Income: $65,390 median household (compared to $66,000 all AAs), $35,846 per capita and 17% low income in CA

Japanese American Statistical Portrait

• Education: 31% bachelor’s and 16% advanced degrees (compared to 29% and 20% all AAs)

• Language: 49% adult immigrants speak English “very well” (compared to 53% all AAs), 19% of 5 years+ in OC have LEP, 1:1,312 ratio of bilingual teachers to students in CA

Japanese American Immigration

• 1880s: recruited agricultural laborers to Hawaii and US West Coast

• 1907: ended immigration, except for “picture brides,” businessmen, and students

• 1924: barred virtually all immigration

• 1965: opened immigration; no longer based on national quotas, but employment and family categories

The Lesson of JA Internment• “Perpetual foreigners”: “Fifth column” subversives, spies, and

saboteurs

• EO 9066, 1942-46: evacuation and incarceration of 120,000 due to “military necessity”

• Impact on family structure: parental authority, communal living, financial loss

• Intergenerational fissures: divide-and-conquer camp policies

• Post-camp legacies: dispersal, assimilation, social/economic insecurity, transgenerational trauma

Reframing JA Culture

• Silence, reserve

• Achievement orientation, career choice

• Ethnic identity crisis, assimilation issues, generational clash, parental emotional distance

Korean American Statistical Portrait

• Population: 1.7 million in US, 10% of the AA population, 5th largest AA ethnic group

• Nativity: 78% of adults are foreign-born (compared to 74% of all AAs), 68% in CA are foreign-born

• Income: $50,000 median household (compared to $66,000 all AAs), $29,267 per capita and 28% low income in CA

Korean American Statistical Portrait

• Education: 35% bachelor’s and 18% advanced degrees (compared to 29% and 20% all AAs)

• Language: 43% adult immigrants speak English “very well” (compared to 53% all AAs), 50% of 5 years+ in OC have LEP, 1:310 ratio of bilingual teachers to students in CA

Korean American Immigration

• 1876 Treaty of Kanghwa: opened Korea to West• 1880s: sent US missions to Korea• 1902-05: recruited Korean Christians for plantation

work• 1905: ended Korean emigration from Japan’s

“protectorate”• 1910-46: Japanese annexation/colonization• 1950-53 Korean War: opened door for war brides and

orphans• 1965: opened family and employment immigration

Bimodal Nature of KA Employment

• Professional labor: underemployment and misemployment

• Cheap labor: manufacturing, service industries, immigrant entrepreneurship

How Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Exploited

• Subcontracting: piece-work, low pay, long hours, unsafe work conditions, ditched wages

• Small businesses: unpaid family labor

• Middle-man minority: 1992 LA uprising and impact on Koreatown community

What is Cultural Competency?

• Culturalism or cultural determinism: “traditional values,” cultural essentialism

• Functionalism or historical functionalism: Social structures become functional over time. Culture is situational and adaptive.

• Structuralism: Social behaviors are strategies used to deal with a set of circumstances. Emphasizes the role of personal choice or agency.

Problems with Culturalism

• Culture as artifact, objectifiable and unchanging vs. culture as text

• Homogeneous, timeless “Orient” vs. heterogeneous, progressive West

• Cultural borderlands are exceptions rather than the norm.

Cultural Competency Is…

• …more than just cultural understanding.

• Understanding of histories and social contexts

• Understanding how groups exercise their own agency

• Understanding diversity and interlocking influences of culture, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, class, generation, and ability