In my ongoing series of interviews with Asian American scholars that highlight new books and research that examine diverse aspects related to Asian and Asian American experiences, I am very happy to present an interview with my fellow sociologist, Margaret M. Chin, Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center and Hunter College, City College of New York.  Margaret’s new book is titled, Stuck: Why Asian Americans Don’t Reach the Top of the Corporate Ladder and focusing on U.S.-born and U.S.-raised Asian Americans, it explores how many of them run into the dreaded “glass ceiling” in which they are no longer able to advance and get promoted into higher-level upper management or executive positions throughout various occupations and industries within the corporate world in the U.S.   The book’s description:

In the classroom, Asian Americans, often singled out as so-called “model minorities,” are expected to be top of the class. Often they are, getting straight As and gaining admission to elite colleges and universities. But the corporate world is a different story. As Margaret M. Chin reveals in this important new book, many Asian Americans get stuck on the corporate ladder, never reaching the top. In Stuck, Chin shows that there is a “bamboo ceiling” in the workplace, describing a corporate world where racial and ethnic inequalities prevent upward mobility.

Drawing on interviews with second-generation Asian Americans, she examines why they fail to advance as fast or as high as their colleagues, showing how they lose out on leadership positions, executive roles, and entry to the coveted boardroom suite over the course of their careers. An unfair lack of trust from their coworkers, absence of role models, sponsors and mentors, and for women, sexual harassment and prejudice especially born at the intersection of race and gender are only a few of the factors that hold Asian American professionals back. Ultimately, Chin sheds light on the experiences of Asian Americans in the workplace, providing insight into and a framework of who is and isn’t granted access into the upper echelons of American society, and why.

• Compared to a generation ago, do you think the pressure for young Asian Americans to attain maximum occupational success has eased, stayed the same, or gotten more intense, and why?
  
  I interviewed three cohorts, college graduates from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Among the interviewees all of them spoke about the pressure to attain maximal occupational success. However, members of the youngest cohort see many more pathways to occupational success in the professional realm. More of them admit that they have the option to go out on their own if traditional routes in large corporations are blocked.
  
  
• In your research, what are some specific successful strategies that corporate America has implemented to become more welcoming and inclusive to Asian Americans and other underrepresented workers as they try to make their way into the “C-Suite” supervisory and executive positions?
  
  Some of the more successful corporate strategies have been to recruit from minority training and mentoring programs. Some of the interviewees were recruited, chosen, nominated from their Affirmative Action-type program – like the SEO, Posse and the Emma Bowen Foundation. From the interviewees’ perspective, these programs (even though outside of the corporation) did well in helping to place people of color — including Asian Americans — in jobs. Within the corporations, programs that helped were those that exposed the employee to different divisional areas and / or executives. Mini assignments trained them broadly, and executives were also given a chance to get to know them. Often individuals were promoted as part of a program to expand the pipeline.
  
  However, interviewees did not mention many programs to move people past mid-level. On the other hand, the majority of my interviewees did not feel unwelcome in corporate America. However, they did list incidents where they have been left out of important conversations or meetings, not invited to afterwork get-togethers, and mistaken for other Asian Americans. Individually, they list these as implicit bias incidents or part of the everyday jockeying for positions in corporate America. But as a whole these are common among many of my interviewees moving on up. It seems that corporate America could do more.
  
  
• There seems to be a growing political divide within the Asian American community between younger, U.S.-born Asian Americans who tend to be more progressive and older recently-arrived Asian immigrants (especially from China) who tend to be more conservative. How do you see this dynamic playing itself out within the Asian American community in the near future in terms of their social, political, or even occupational outlook?
  
  My research shows that there are many older U.S.-born Asian Americans who are progressive. They are outnumbered in their age group by the hyper-selected Asian immigrants who tend to be more conservative. Likewise, there are conservative young U.S.-born Asian Americans too. It’s not a generational divide, but more of a class and ethnic divide. Among all the groups, however, they are recognizing that they all face racism. The anti-Asian violence that has struck the community since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic has united many conservatives and progressives. While they may still disagree on a solution (whether to find a systemic solution or proclaim that they as individuals are more accomplished and thus does not deserve to be treated this way), at least they are more likely to recognize that they are in the same boat together.
  
  
• As a researcher and an alum of these schools, what are your thoughts about the controversy and debate about whether specialized public schools like New York City’s Stuyvesant High should or should not expand their admissions criteria and move away from strictly relying on standardized tests in order to improve the representation of Black and Latinx students?
  
  I went to Stuyvesant High School, when the school student body was much more racially diverse. I really felt at the time that I learned among peers. As a researcher, the public schools need to address the question of how to make the schools equitable and to provide a learning environment that reflects the humanity around us. In New York City, that means to have a more racially equitable school system. The three specialized high schools that are mandated by the State of NY to use the SHSAT serve less than 6% of the middle school population. Instead of fighting over using the test in these three schools, New York City needs to improve the education for the rest of the population. For the rest of the high schools in New York City, there is no need to rely strictly on a single test. Holistic criteria can be created. New York City can also create more high schools or high school seats in neighborhoods where there is high demand especially in areas with an increasing population of Asian immigrants.
  
  
• Some people have speculated that in the last few years, more young Asian Americans seem to be changing their worldview in terms of the best strategy for long-term success and happiness for themselves and future generations and as such, are recognizing that rather than trying to fit into the mainstream establishment, they should challenge the mainstream establishment and work to fundamentally change it to make it more inclusive and just. What are your thoughts?
  
  I would agree with your assessment. There is much more opportunity for the younger generation to go out on their own. This is true because corporations do not make long term commitments to employees anymore. Since there is a lack of commitment, younger workers are more willing to strike it out on their own. Many of the older workers I interviewed did not feel this way because the cohorts I interviewed are approaching or are way past mid-career and at least before this recession, were not thinking of striking it out on their own. Younger members who had experiences with start-ups felt different.
  
  
• Beyond what you’ve written so far, what was the most interesting finding or memorable moment that you came across in doing your research for this book?
  
  There has to be more research on first-generation college graduates and how they are doing. Among my interviewees, surprisingly, there were very few first generation college students. Their voices are missing from the research on Asian Americans.

In recent years, it has become more common to see Asian American actors in mainstream U.S. advertisements and commercials. This trend is notable for a two reasons. First, it represents a significant change from decades past, in which Asian American faces were almost completely absent from such advertising campaigns. Alternatively, when they were included, more often than not, Asian Americans were depicted in racially offensive and stereotypical caricatures, many of which were based on Orientalist perceptions of Asians and Asian Americans as exotic, mysterious, dangerous, inferior, and/or hypersexual.

Second, this increased visibility of Asian Americans in mainstream advertising seems to reflect the growing political, economic, and cultural influence of Asian countries and of Asian Americans within the U.S. Within the current climate of increased globalization, economic instability, and demographic changes, Asian Americans, other racial/ethnic minorities, and immigrants are in a unique position to leverage their individual and community resources to make important contributions to help move the U.S. forward into the 21st century.

With this in mind, and with the recognition that the Asian American population has an estimated $452 billion in purchasing power, advertisers and their corporate clients are increasingly including Asian American actors in their ads and commercials. As summarized on Asian American-focused sites like 8Asians.com, recent examples of television commercials that feature Asian Americans include eSurance, Target, Verizon, Staples, Hewlett Packard, Subaru, and McDonalds, to name just a few.

However, even though the level of blatant Orientalist stereotypes has declined, there are still numerous examples in which perceptions of Asian culture and Asian Americans as exotic, mysterious, and slightly dangerous are used in the advertising industry. For example, to the right is a relatively recent advertisement for the Motorola Razr cellphone that appeared in mainstream U.S. magazines such as Newsweek. Unfortunately, its Orientalist depictions are clear, particularly as applied to Asian women in clearly sexualized terms.

Specifically, the ad uses a woman of Asian descent dressed in an outfit that suggests a ninja-like image and striking a subtly menacing pose in which, rather than a sword, she wields a “Sharper Than Ever” Razr cellphone in her right hand, implying that the user of it can become a dangerous weapon in the figurative sense. Further, the woman’s curvaceous figure, Cleopatra-like eye makeup, skin-tight outfit, and long flowing hair again builds on the Orientalist image of Asian woman as seductive and sexually alluring. The result of these historical and ongoing Orientalist images of Asian Americans is that they are seen only within a narrowly-confined box of popular images and racially-tinged caricatures, rather than as normal citizens or even as Americans.

Opportunities and Dangers Ahead

In more recent years, portrayals of Asian Americans in mainstream ads and commercials has generally been less prone to such Orientalist images. Nonetheless, even as more advertisers incorporate more Asian Americans into their marketing campaigns, there is still the danger of promoting stereotypes, as the above-discussed Motorola Razr advertisement exemplifies. Further, a recent article by journalist Paul Farhi in the Washington Post describes a recent television commercial in which a White customer learns about a few multipurpose cellphone from an Asian American Staples sales clerk:

When Asian Americans appear in advertising, they typically are presented as the technological experts — knowledgeable, savvy, perhaps mathematically adept or intellectually gifted. They’re most often shown in ads for business-oriented or technical products — smartphones, computers, pharmaceuticals, electronic gear of all kinds.

The stereotypical portrayal reinforces a marketing concept known as the “match up” theory, which states that consumers respond more favorably to products advertised by an actor or spokesperson who “fits” the product. Just as consumers expect cosmetics to be sold by a supermodel or athletic equipment by a professional athlete, in the minds of the U.S. public, Asian Americans are strongly associated with technical know-how. . . . Variations on the theme have appeared in numerous TV commercials in recent months:

Staples advertises its computer-repair service with images of laptops flying like gulls into one of its stores. When one of the laptops crash-lands, the fix-it technician who comes to its “rescue” is an Asian American.

CVS’s TV ads feature a lab-coated pharmacist of Asian descent dispensing advice about medication to a baffled Caucasian lady.

A mother and her teenage son shopping at Best Buy learn that the store offers “Geek Squad” techies, who are packaged and displayed like life-size action figures on the store’s shelves. One of the tech guys is an Asian American.

IBM’s commercials feature brainy IT consultants, including a young Asian American woman who talks up the company’s efforts to create “a smarter planet.”

The article goes on to note that recent advertisements (such as this one from Staples) that feature Asian American actors can be a double-edged sword. That is, on the one hand, it is encouraging to see more Asian American faces in the mainstream media and in positions of authority or knowledge, rather than in the kind of blatantly demeaning and offensive roles that Asian American are used to seeing about themselves. On the other hand, the predominance of such roles that cast Asian Americans as tech experts has the danger of creating another narrowly-defined, one-dimensional stereotype – of Asian Americans as technically proficient, but nothing more.

In other words, to market to Asian Americans, advertisers and their corporate clients should remember that the history, culture, and socioeconomic characteristics of the Asian American population is complex, three-dimensional, and intricate. Like all other racial, ethnic, cultural, or religious groups, the Asian American experience cannot be reduced into a limited set of media and popular culture images, no matter how seemingly “positive” such portrayals may appear to be. Similar to model minority perceptions of Asian Americans, we need to both recognize the successes as well as the ongoing challenges and multiple levels of diversity within the Asian American community.

Indeed, when it comes to this trend of incorporating more Asian Americans into mainstream ads and commercials, there needs to be a diversity and wide range of images and marketing approaches that highlight both the unique characteristics and contributions that are specific to the Asian American population but that no not rely on Orientalist stereotypes, in addition to “race-neutral” ones that illustrate that Asian Americans are just regular, normal citizens and reflect their identity and position in society – just another part of the American mainstream.

Toward this goal, Asian Americans can have also a direct impact in facilitating positive change. Some time ago, I had with a student in which she mentioned that, as an advertising major, she also has a strong commitment to use her experiences and training to work toward greater racial equality and justice for Asian Americans and people of color. But she also expressed reservations about entering the advertising industry with its history of portraying people of color in very narrow and even stereotypical ways.

One of the things that I told her was that if students like her self-select out of these kinds of industries, everything will just be perpetual status quo and no positive change would ever occur. Instead, I encouraged her to bring her determination toward activism and passion for social change with her into the advertising industry, build a critical mass with others who share similar goals, and to fight for the change that she wants to see happen.

Hopefully, that time is now.

You might be interested to read the following posts from June of years past:

• 2009: The Model Minority Image: Balancing Praise and Caution
  Analyzing the model minority image and how Asian Americans can both celebrate hard work and accomplishment along with mindful reflection of the different dynamics of what success entails.
• 2008: Disneyland: A Metaphor for Fitting In
  A family outing to Disneyland highlights some of the issues that Asian Americans face when it comes to whether or not we’re part of the American mainstream.
• 2007: Survey of Young People in California
  A recent survey of young Californians highlight many similarities and a few interesting differences across racial groups.
• 2006: Best Companies for Asian Americans
  Research by Diversity Inc. magazine identifies the most Asian American-friendly companies in the U.S.
• 2005: 49ers Video Promotes Anti-Asian Stereotypes
  Analyzing the controversy over a comedy skit produced by the San Francisco 49ers football team that many Asian Americans have criticized as racist.
• 2004: Who’s the More Ignorant?
  Reactions to a racial slur from Bill Parcells highlights the historical and ongoing differences between being ‘Asian’ and ‘Asian American.’