Stereotypes and First Person Plural

Last Wednesday at Frank Dining Hall, a panel composing of two professors, Professor Seung Hye Suh and Professor Sharon Goto, and the director of the AARC, Sefa Aina, used Amy Chua’s article, “Why Chinese Mother’s Are Superior” as a catalyst for a discussion regarding “Asian parenting”. During the talk, Professor Goto brought up a psychology related point of sociability versus competence. Sociability, or the inclination of being sociable, is normally seen as a support related trait involving qualities such as trustworthiness, morality, and helpfulness. On the other hand, competence can be considered a status-related trait, which can involve, but is not limited to, qualities such as intellect, ability, and respectability. Professor Goto stated that these two things are believed to be inversely related, that is, the greater a person’s sociability skills, the lesser their competence, and vice versa. If this inverse relationship is true, then it can be assumed that one would need to give up activities such as play dates or sports in favor of studying or practicing the violin as Chua said she had her daughters do.

After hearing that sports were considered more of a social activity and not to be seen as something that would make a person as competent in society as playing the violin would, I became a bit upset and began wondering why sports are seen in this way, and thus have less Asian participation compared to Westerners. To begin answering this question, I considered the fact that stereotypes arise from some sort of ideological function in society. So, what catalyzed the idea that are sports are mainly a social activity, and what do Asian have to gain by engaging less in this area?

To answer the second half of the question for myself, I concluded that people may engage less in sports because, as a socially labeled activity, this implies that sports would fulfill ones wants for fun and being in the company of others. This is not exactly what comes to mind when one thinks of professional jobs or economical success. So by thinking that sports are just “for fun”, one may devote more time to things such as education which has been shown to be a great factor in professional success. One reason for why sports are even seen as a social activity in the first place may come from the stereotyping of athletes, or more specifically, jocks. Jocks tend to be stereotyped as big, loud, not-very-bright white males who like to party and hook up with girls every weekend. This image is quite different from the image of how most people who value education would like to be viewed and screams incompetence in society. I currently cannot think of additional reasons at this moment, thoughts?

I also would like to comment on the film was saw in class today, First Person Plural, by Deann Borshay. Something I enjoyed from the film was how they took the time to film Ok Jin’s Korean family and hear their stories about her adoption and their reunion with each other. Most of the perspectives in our readings have involved the immigrant herself, her daughters, and/or an analysis from an outside, interested party. Because our readings rarely speak of families across the Pacific, it was refreshing to see an example of an interaction between the women we read about and their initial family. Going off on a tangent, I was also wondering if many of the adopted children around Ok Jin’s age when she arrived in America experienced memory loss and then recovery as she did?