W4 - Discussion Question # 1

Unfortunately, I would have to say that I am part of a group that has been and continues to be stereotyped. I am an Asian-American woman of Korean descent and while I was born in South Korea, I practically spent my whole life here in the States and grew up in Northern California. The following stereotypes come to my mind: 1) Asians are supposed to be really smart and especially good in math, 2) Asian woman are bad drivers, and 3) Asian women are supposed to be more submissive to their male counterparts and will wait on them hand and foot. Out of the three, I think the one that has bothered me the most growing up is probably the stereotype that I am supposed to be really book smart and excel in math. All my life, I have always struggled with math and when people find out how bad I really am with numbers, I always hear responses like, “How could you not be good at math? You’re Asian,” or “Are you sure you’re really Asian? Because you should’ve been taking Calculus by fifth grade,” and other stupid comments to that affect. Since, I was pretty bad in math, I was always noted as the “exception” to the “Asians are good at math rule,” and to some degree the comments did make me feel bad because I felt like everyone else who I knew was Asian was really good at math and yet here I was struggling and repeating my math courses that were considered “elementary.” As I grew older, I didn’t really mind that I wasn’t great at math because it dawned on me that while I wasn’t excelling in math, I was probably better in English and other non-science, non-math related subjects than most of my Asian peers. I think for the most part, my experience with my stereotype do reflect the concepts identified in the text, except for the fact that I have never felt like the stereotype of being great at math has “confined” me or inhibited from my “personal development as whole human beings” (pg. 89). So what if I’m not good at math? It’s not the end of the world and I think I turned out to be a pretty decent human being.