(Response to Aronson article and Tuan article)

The Aronson article discusses racial stereotypes as they affect educational success. The Tuan article talks about Asian Americans as a minority-majority and how they as an identity differ or don’t differ from other minorities and whites. As an Asian female growing up in America, I often found that some of my high school peers didn’t see my academic success as my own but rather as a product of my race, which was obviously frustrating and wrong. Because of that, I definitely connect to both articles. What I think I find most interesting about the Asian American dilemma is that others consider Asian Americans to be outsiders (as Tuan discusses), like other immigrants and minorities are considered to be outsiders, however they are also considered to be academically and socioeconomically on par or better than many of the white majority. It’s such a strange juxtaposition of the stereotyping of the race, and yet stereotypes do end up defining people – even when one consciously tries to be the opposite of the stereotype.