When I was a student, research on
#AsianAmericans
never appeared on my syllabi. Now as faculty, I’m committed to conducting research that makes the study of Asian Americans essential to the social sciences—creating the syllabi I wish I had.
#AAPI
@TheAAPSS
The SCOTUS ruling to strike down race-based admissions at Harvard and U.N.C. is NOT a win for
#AsianAmericans
Asian Americans have been used as a pawn and a wedge in a fight against
#affirmativeaction
White students will benefit most from this decision.
Black & Asian communities are often portrayed in conflict w/each other, but we share a history of solidarity. As we reckon w/racial injustice, police brutality & anti-Asian violence, we have an opportunity to relearn that history & build on our solidarity.
The jobless rate for
#AsianAmericans
is higher than that of whites & Latinos at 10.7%, up from 2.8% a year ago.
#COVID19
is having a devastating economic impact on AsianAms, nearly quarter of whom work in industries such as restaurants, retail & personal svcs such as nail salons
41 years ago,
#VincentChin
was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat by two White autoworkers in Detroit.
His killing became representative of the violence, racism, and discrimination that
#AsianAmericans
have long endured in the US.
It also sparked a movement.
When I was a student
@Columbia
, NONE of my courses focused on
#AsianAmericans
. Now that I've returned as a professor, I'm committed doing research that places the study of
#AAPIs
as central to
#Sociology
so that I can teach the type of courses that were never offered to me
#APIHM
Choosing to name a
#KoreanAmerican
professor Ji-Yoon Kim is a rare cultural specificity in Hollywood. By casting
#SandraOh
as an English professor, the show helps dispel the racist idea that English profs cannot be Asian.
@nancywyuen
#TheChair
#Netflix
“I would only hire Asians if I could,” a professor once told me. “You all are so hard-working.”
She meant it as a compliment.
“To some, Asian work matters more than Asian lives.” ~
@mitrakalita
@TIME
Since so many of you have been sharing joyous news, I'm inspired, humbled & honored to share mine.
FAR more than a personal accomplishment, I share this honor w/a legion of
#AAPI
scholars who came before me, whose work was not recognized in this way, and hope it inspires others.
“No one will be interested in research on Asian Americans,” a senior professor once told me.
Yet here I am.
As I enter
@TheAAPSS
, I am joined by the pioneering scholars who came before me whose brilliance was overlooked, and whose research was dismissed.
A reminder that
#Asian
#immigrants
are NOT representative of their countries of origin. They are
#hyperselected
: they're more likely to have a BA than both their non-migrant counterparts & the US mean. Hyperselectivity, NOT Asian
#culture
, explains
#AsianAmerican
educ attainment.
#Chinese
restaurants are closing, NOT b/c they're unsuccessful but b/c the children of Chinese immigrants are successful
More econ mobile children of
#immigrants
are LESS likely to be self-employed
@leah_boustan
Cited w/another Jennifer Lee
@jenny8lee
!
In the wake of increased anti-Asian violence during the
#COVID19
pandemic, Illinois became THE FIRST state to require that
#AsianAmerican
history is taught in every public school in the state beginning in the 2022-23 academic year.
Honoring the victims of the mass murder in
#Atlanta
one year ago.
Their loss has compelled us to reckon with our nation’s long and brutal legacy of anti-Asian bigotry, misogyny, violence, and exclusion.
I accepted this award in honor of my father who was a foreign-born PhD student whose accented spoken English didn’t match his reading fluency nor his fluency in German. The latter enabled him to read the work German philosophers in their native tongue but his profs didn’t notice.
My sociological imagination expanded when I chose to READ ACROSS disciplinary boundaries & genres.
I'm ringing in '22 🎆 by giving props to 22 BRILLIANT
#AsianAmerican
#women
political scientists, historians, health researchers, writers & creatives from whom I learn so much 🙏🏼🧵
PLEASE join me in CONGRATULATING my brilliant, beautiful, and ever-so-stylish colleague
#MignonMoore
@mignon_moore
who has been promoted to Full Professor! Well-done and well-deserved!
Two and a half years into the pandemic, it finally happened... not COVID, but COVID-related hate. And it happened where I least expected it, running on the grounds
@the_IAS
@Princeton
.
I debated whether to share this, but decided it may help others feel less alone if I did. A 🧵
I got emotional when I accepted this award as I reflected on how much was asked of so many of us during a painfully challenging year.
What fueled me was the work, the voices, & the allyship of friends & colleagues, including many I've connected w/only through this platform. TY🙏
I'll never forget when a sr colleague told me that no one would be interested in research on
#AsianAmericans
, yet here we are.
My paper on AsianAmerica & the Culture War on
#AffirmativeAction
is
#trending
in
#Sociology
. Thx for helping me prove them wrong
For Faculty, when students mispronounce a word, realize that they've probably read the word but haven't heard it pronounced, which isn't unusual for children of
#immigrants
(like me) and
#firstgen
students. Be kind & non-judgmental when you correct them.
#AcademicTwitter
The
#hiddencurriculum
of academia isn't just hidden from undergrads. It's hidden from grad students, too.
I'm sure we all had things we were embarrassed we didn't know in grad school. So let's tell those stories. I'll go first. (1/many)
This is my mother on the day we immigrated to the US
Having experienced discrimination as a Korean born in Japan, she vowed never to be silent about injustice as
#SheRose
At tonight's
#VPDebate
, I stand w/
@KamalaHarris
& the
#AAPI
sheroes who paved the way for me
#AAPISheRose
Are
#AsianAmericans
people of color or the next in line to become white?
Here, I shift the frame from the social scientists who study assimilation & privilege the voices of AsianAms who are experiencing it
My latest
@BrookingsInst
just presented
@the_IAS
I don't have the words to express how stunned and humbled I am by this recognition, nor how meaningful it is, especially during a year when so many of us have fought to make
#AsianAmericans
central to the discourse on race.
Grateful to my community with whom I share this honor🙏
The
#Asian
advantage in this pandemic is often reduced to essentialist arguments: China, Korea & Vietnam have contained
#COVID19
b/c of draconian govt policy and Asian culture.
The advantage is STRUCTURAL: widespread testing, contact tracing, and isolating positive cases.
The strategies pursued by South Korea, Vietnam & China are paying off. As of Nov. 1, the cumulative death rate per million is:
🇺🇸U.S.: 696
🇬🇧U.K.: 685
🇫🇷France: 563
vs.
🇰🇷South Korea: 9
🇨🇳China: 3
🇻🇳Vietnam: 0.36
[Chart shows data correct as of Oct. 30]
#KamalaHarrisVP
brings a legion of FIRSTS to the Vice Presidency 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
A daughter of immigrants from India & Jamaica, SHE is THE FIRST woman, the FIRST Black person, the FIRST Indian American & the FIRST Asian American to hold the office.
Also, my fellow
#AsianAmericans
, know that if you want support from your fellow Americans, especially
#POC
, we cannot call out
#racism
ONLY when we are being attacked.
We must stand in solidarity with other POC, especially when they are being attacked.
Tell me more about how China is the problem, while Asian Americans are being attacked.
Tell me more about much “accuracy“ matters, when you’ve spent months downplaying the virus.
We are not “at risk.” Targeting is happening now. Look after each other. Call racism out. Be safe.
🔥🔥
@tressiemcphd
: "part of being Black and being a woman in this country is that, even when you’re very successful, you just don’t control the terms of your success. My success is always limited by how well other people can imagine the possibility of me."
The Department of Sociology
@Columbia
is delighted to welcome our newest faculty!
Mario L. Small is the newly appointed Quetelet Professor of Social Science
Marissa Thompson and David Knight will join the faculty as Assistant Professors in July 2022
I could not ❤️ this more
@sesamestreet
's 1st
#AsianAmerican
puppet is
#KoreanAmerican
& has the same Korean name as I 지영 Ji-Young (I spell mine Jee-Young)
Ji = smart/wise
Young = brave/courageous/strong
She skateboards, plays electric guitar & cooks
#AsianAmericans
make up 27.6% of
@Harvard
's class of '26. In the war on affirmative action, the plaintiffs argue that the % would be higher if admissions were based strictly on objective metrics, unconstrained by race. But even grades are subject to bias.
Opponents of
#AffirmativeAction
that have portrayed
#AsianAmericans
as adversaries of the policy, but 69% of Asian American registered voters SUPPORT affirmative action in university admissions.
Moreover, Asian American support has remained stable & high for nearly a decade. 🧵
Anti-Asian racism was not born of
#COVID19
.
In
#California
—home to 1 in 6
#AsianAmericans
—22% reported having experienced a hate crime or hate incident BEFORE the onset of COVID-19.
What COVID-19 did was make anti-Asian racism and violence more rampant and impossible to ignore.
Data Disaggregation is critical to understanding
#AsianAmericans
24% of AsianAms have attained a graduate degree (compared to 13% of all Americans), but the means masks tremendous heterogeneity:
Indians: 43%
Chinese: 29%
Vietnamese: 10%
Filipino/as: 10%
Hmong: 6%
Cambodians: 5%
Hmong, Vietnamese, Filipino, Laotian and Cambodian Americans all fall under the broad category of Asian, but their experiences when it comes to things like education levels can vary greatly from other Asian groups such as Chinese, Korean and Japanese.
Please join me in CONGRATULATING
#MinZhou
on her promotion to
#DistinguishedProfessor
@UCLA
👏👏👏 A brilliant and generous colleague, collaborator, and mentor, she continues to inspire as she paves the way for so many of us.
Percent of 4-year colleges & universities in the US that have dedicated programs for:
Asian American Studies: 2%
Latino Studies: 3%
Native American Studies: 3%
Ethnic Studies: 5%
African American/Black Studies: 9%
🚨 NEW REPORT from
@GCristinaMora
et al.
"This has very little to do with Asian-Americans. Asian-Americans are being used as pawns and a wedge in a fight against affirmative action." Tonight,
@JLeeSoc
, after U.S. Justice Department backs discrimination suit against Harvard. Intvu
@7
:20pm
The brilliant
@ProfJanelleWong
explains that the cases against affirmative action were orchestrated by Ed Blum (a conservative, white legal entrepreneur) who has fought for decades to gut race-conscious policies, including Shelby County v. Holder and Fisher v. University of Texas
Students for Fair Admissions brought the case against Harvard University over affirmative action and “went to Asian Americans to provide cover for its white supremacist agenda,” says
@ProfJanelleWong
, director of Asian American studies at the University of Maryland.
"Racism is not a natural human response to people who are different (or, more accurately, who are construed as different). Rather, it is produced by politics. If we think about racism in this way, we can imagine and enable political alternatives."
#MaeNgai
More than 1 in 4
#AsianAmerican
youth have experienced anti-Asian hate in the wake of
#COVID19
.
One pattern that emerged is the complicity of adults, who were present in nearly half of the cases and almost never intervened.
🚨 JUST OUT: The 2022 STAATUS Index
Despite a new administration, attacks against our community continue to increase, reminding us that racism against
#AsianAmericans
is deeply embedded in US history, culture & institutions, and have been for over 150 years.
🧵 of some findings
The killing of Daunte Wright is both shattering and infuriatingly familiar. It’s not enough to say
#BlackLivesMatter
—we have to build a country where they actually do.
#SayHisName
🧵As
#APAHM
comes to a close, I'd like to honor some fierce
#AsianAmerican
women scholars whose writing has fueled me during the past few months.
The Takeaway: In order to understand the present, we must understand the past & include Asian Americans in our discourse on race.
84% of
#AsianAmericans
worry about being the victim of a mass shooting.
#AsianAmericans
are THE MOST LIKELY to worry about being a victim of gun violence, and most likely to worry "a lot" about this.
On Jan 30, there will be a hearing on HB.3361 to discuss data
#disaggregation
for
#AsianAmericans
. Why is this important? It ensures the equitable allocation of federal, state & local funding. Email letters of support to lyra
@scholarsstrategynetwork
.org
Regardless of the identity or motivations of the assailant, the mass murder in
#MontereyPark
is terrifying for our community.
Violence against
#AsianAmericans
continues to surge, yet 1 in 3 Americans remains unaware.
Be ally to your friends, colleagues, and students by learning
On the 1-yr anniversary of the massacre in
#Atlanta
,
@AAPIData
asks, how much has anti-Asian hate changed?🧵
Anti-Asian hate crimes & hate incidents *INCREASED* since last yr
In 2021, 1 in 6
#AsianAmerican
adults experienced a hate crime or hate incident, up from 1 in 8 in 2020
In light of the scandal about elite white parents buying their children's admission into universities, remember that
@Harvard
’s preference for legacies also gives elite whites an advantage & places non-whites at disadvantage. My take for
@latimesopinion
This is why, despite the problems of the platform, I won't leave. It provides a community for
#AsianAmericans
, which is salve as we grieve, mourn & support one another.
@estarLA
on the silence of her bff after the Atlanta spa shootings. HT
@alyssajperry
📢📢📢
@Columbia
Sociology invites applications for an Assistant Professor
Field of specialization is OPEN
Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled.
Please consider applying and spread the word:
Deeply honored to have been inducted into The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. To have been elected in the same year as my dear colleagues Tom DiPrete & Mae Ngai, and co-author Min Zhou makes this especially meaningful. I'm still stunned by the news.
Breaking News: Students suing Harvard over affirmative action policies they say discriminate against Asian-Americans have a new ally: the Justice Department
Accurately counting
#AsianAmericans
is a
#CivilRights
issue, esp b/c the dominant narrative is the
#modelminority
, which results in the invisibility of disadvantaged Asian ethnic groups, exclusion from policy, and denial of federal resources. Our paper -->
Most common surnames of in-person Harris County (
#Houston
) voters so far (994k total)
- Nguyen 8.8k
- Smith 8.0k
- Williams 7.6k
- Johnson 7.4k
- Jones 6.0k
- Garcia 5.7k
- Rodriguez 5.7k
- Martinez 5.1k
- Brown 5.0k
- Davis 4.8k
🗳️☑️🇺🇸
(We can tell you how many with your name!)
**BREAKING** ➡️ 70% of
#AsianAmerican
registered voters SUPPORT
#AffirmativeAction
in higher education.
** NOTE that support for affirmative action has INCREASED among Asian Americans, including
#ChineseAmericans
, since 2016.
Please join me in CONGRATULATING my brilliant colleague
#VanTran
@vantrannyc
who has been selected as a recipient of the Presidential Teaching Award
@Columbia
! He was selected from among over 900 nominees to earn the university's highest teaching honor. KUDOS, Dr. Tran!
On 1/29 a police officer pepper-sprayed a 9-yo Black girl who had been handcuffed & forced into the back of a police car. In the struggle that proceeded an officer yelled at the girl “You’re acting like a child!” She retorted “I AM a child!”
@socprofjones
A sweet post it from my Dad 🤗
I don't have the heart to tell him that I can't read Korean (apart from my name) so I welcome translations from anyone who can 🙏
#KoreanTwitter
US Asian immigrants are, on average, hyper-selected.
They're more highly educated than their non-migrant counterparts + more highly educated than the general US population.
This explains the high SES of some
#AsianAmericans
, and does not negate
#WhitePrivilege
.
If white privilege exists— why are Asian-Americans the most successful group in America?
If we award people based on race, why are Asians the top-earners, with best credit and the highest educational achievements?
It’s almost as if liberals are completely full of shit.
THREAD: This moment should be an awakening for all
#AsianAmericans
, regardless of political persuasion. It is a blunt reminder that regardless of whether we were born in the U.S., regardless of our national origins or citizenship, our racial status in the U.S. is precarious.
The vilification of
#AsianAmericans
is reminiscent of the scapegoating of
#Arabs
#Muslims
&
#SouthAsians
after 9/11. BUT then Pres Bush denounced hate crimes against Muslims. By contrast, Trump repeatedly used the term “Chinese virus”. The damage is done.
In her decision, Judge Allison Burroughs gave an eloquent defense of the benefits of diversity, and said while the time might come when it would be possible to look beyond race in college admissions, that time was not yet here.
OPEN RANK TENURE TRACK POSITION at
@Columbia
The Dept of
#Sociology
invites applications for a distinguished scholar AT ANY RANK to fill a position as part Columbia's initiative in the areas of
#Race
#Racism
#Racial
#Inequality
PLEASE APPLY, SHARE & R/T
.
@UCLA
receives a $10-million gift to create endowed chairs for Asian American, African American, Chicano & American Indian studies
The gift will also fund research projects & programming—cementing UCLA’s role as a national leader in this academic field
2/ Might I add, WHERE is the outrage among
#AsianAmericans
who support Ed Blum & his fight to dismantle
#AffirmativeAction
@Harvard
, after learning that elite whites are buying their children's way into elite universities??? The silence is deafening.
@MarieMyungOkLee
As I spend my first
#Thanksgiving
separated from my parents & sister, I'm reminded that my parents hadn't seen theirs for over a decade when they immigrated
Today, I miss them dearly, but am especially thankful for all the sacrifices they made for us
#ImmigrantsMakeAmericaGreat
1/ Studies of
#bias
against
#AsianAmericans
have focused on the sources & consequences.
We rewrite the Q to consider how Asian Americans ANTICIPATE & RESPOND to bias ⬇️⬇️
How do
#AsianAmericans
seek to preempt bias by STRATEGICALLY ADAPTING to mitigate it?
@AnnualReviews
2024
Asians reported feeling the least included at work w/only 16% of Asian men and 20% of Asian women say they feel fully included.
These percentages are significantly lower than that for the third-lowest group, Black women, at 22%.
Diversity ≠ Inclusion
US Chinese immigrants are
#hyperselected
They're 12x as likely to have a BA compared to their non-migrant counterparts in China & 2x as likely as the US mean
Their hyper-selectivity drives stereotypes about the presumed competence of US Chinese, which extends to Asian Americans
This figure derived from
@JLeeSoc
's work is so important for understanding stereotypes of immigrants and immigrant selectivity. Only 4% of people in China have a B.A. degree - as compared to 17% of people in Mexico.
1 in 6 Californians is
#AsianAmerican
. For too long, we've been left out of policy conversations. This historic $156MM investment to combat anti-Asian hate will focus on victim svcs, healing, prevention, tracking & data collection, inc $10MM to
@AAPIData
.
The truth and tragedy of
#privilege
that
#Parasite
lays bare:
"When you have privilege, you don’t have to have any sense of awareness about anyone else, while they have to know everything about you."
EXCITING NEWS!
@RussellSageFdn
is launching a NEW
#Pipeline
#Grants
Competition for early & mid-career researchers to promote
#diversity
in the social sciences broadly, including racial, ethnic, gender, disciplinary, institutional, & geographic diversity.
“What is happening right now cannot be dissociated from our identity as Asians.”
@BTS_twt
Given their stardom, BTS could easily choose to turn a blind eye and dismiss anti-Asian violence and racism. They choose not to, and neither should anyone else.
Mytake4
@ScienceMagazine
Despite the increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in the US, one-third of Americans remain unaware of the situation. The White House’s invitation to K-pop group
@BTS_twt
will go a long way toward raising awareness, writes
@JLeeSoc
in a new Editor's Blog post.
Anti-Asian violence & racism have surged since the Atlanta massacre last yr that left 8 dead—including 6 Asian women—but many still fail to notice.
🧵 about the invisibility of
#AsianAmericans
in our imagination, research, funding priorities & curricula.
Deeply HONORED to join the Board
@RussellSageFdn
w/
@TomSugrue
, and to have the opportunity to give back to the foundation that has supported me from the very early stages of my career.