If you're the only person from your ethnic background in your organization or team, you probably know what it's like to be misunderstood or marginalized. Organizational consultant Adrian Pei describes key challenges ethnic minorities face in majority-culture organizations, unpacking the historical forces at play and what both minority and majority cultures need to know in order to work together fruitfully.

When people find themselves as the minorities in different situations, they often feel as if they have been placed onstage with a spotlight on them. Consequently, they become prisoners of anxiety, and engage in certain predictable, negative behaviors. Owing to sheer anxiety and mental overload, these situational minorities often find themselves behaving unintelligently. This book uses real-life experiences of diverse people to illustrate that, if not understood and addressed, situational minorities at school or work are unlikely to perform at their highest potentials. This book is for anyone who wants to understand human behavior and performance: why minorities struggle in majority schools, or why the only male or female on the team has to overcome a mental barrier in order to catch up.

Recent research suggests that Black and minority ethnic (BME) academics remain underrepresented, particularly at senior levels in higher education, and tend to be concentrated in new, post-1992 universities. This book provides an original comparative study of BME academics in both the UK and the USA, two different yet similar cultural and political climates, considering issues of inequality, difference and identity in the Academy. Presenting a distinctive and engaging voice, the book discusses the complexity of race, gender and identity in the context of higher education, an area that continues to appear to be dominated by white, middle class values and perspectives. Chapters offer an up-to-date commentary on the purpose, failures and potential of research on race, gender and identity, and its place within contemporary education and sociology. The book broadens the understanding of educational research, considering both sociological and cultural discourse, as well as examining racialized and gendered identities from a theoretical and analytical standpoint. The book closes by offering suggestions for viable policy shifts in this area. The Experiences of Black and Minority Ethnic Academics will be of key interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the field of education, as well as sociologists wanting to learn more about black and minority academics in higher education.

Minority invisibility has gone unnoticed in the communication discipline. It denies the existence of racial problems by consciously or unconsciously downplaying, ignoring, or oversimplifying the issues. This is evidenced from the claims of color-blindness and reverse discrimination, the belief in model minorities, and exaggerated, negative, or purposeful racial displays that permeate American culture. Using in-depth interviews with Asian-American professionals from various metropolitan areas, this study investigates these professionals' perceptions on minority invisibility and model minority status. It explores Asian Americans' ethnic consciousness on four levels, discussing how the group perceives their individual invisibility, their group members' invisibility, the invisibility of other American co-cultural groups, and finally their expectations in changing minority invisibility in the United States. The work considers diverse viewpoints on minority invisibility, model minority, satisfaction and dissatisfaction with mainstream American culture, and co-cultural ethnic relations. This study is useful to graduate and undergraduate students and researchers with an interest in race relations, Asian-American studies, co-cultural theory, and intercultural communication studies. Book jacket.

Becoming a Model Minority: Schooling Experiences of Ethnic Koreans in China looks at the manner in which ethnic Korean students construct self-perception out of the model minority stereotype in their school and lives in Northeast China. It also examines how this self-perception impacts the strength of the model minority stereotype in their attitudes toward school and strategies for success. Fang Gao shows how this stereotype tends to obscure significant barriers to scholastic success suffered by Korean students, as well as how it silences the disadvantages faced by Korean schooling in China's reform period and neglects the importance of multiculturalism and racial equality under the context of a harmonious society.

This book examines the contemporary history, culture, and social relationships that form the fundamental issues confronted by Asians in America today. Comprehensive, yet concise, it focuses on abroad range of issues, and features a unique comparative approach that analyzes how race, class, and gender intersect throughout the contemporary Asian American experience. Chapter topics cover the history of Asians in America; emerging communities, changing realities; Asian Americans and educational opportunity; workplace issues; anti-Asian violence; Asian Americans and the media; Asian American families and identities; and political empowerment. For anyone interested in an understanding and awareness beyond the simplistic stereotype of the "model minority"-through the exposure to important concerns of Asian American groups and communities.

In Learning from Experience, Paula Moya offers an alternative to some influential philosophical assumptions about identity and experience in contemporary literary theory. Arguing that the texts and lived experiences of subordinated people are rich sources of insight about our society, Moya presents a nuanced universalist justification for identity-based work in ethnic studies. This strikingly original book provides eloquent analyses of such postmodernist feminists as Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, Norma Alarcón, and Chela Sandoval, and counters the assimilationist proposals of minority neoconservatives such as Shelby Steele and Richard Rodriguez. It advances realist proposals for multicultural education and offers an understanding of the interpretive power of Chicana feminists including Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Helena María Viramontes. Learning from Experience enlarges our concept of identity and offers new ways to situate aspects of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation in discursive and sociopolitical contexts.

As the population of older Americans grows, it is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. Differences in health by racial and ethnic status could be increasingly consequential for health policy and programs. Such differences are not simply a matter of education or ability to pay for health care. For instance, Asian Americans and Hispanics appear to be in better health, on a number of indicators, than White Americans, despite, on average, lower socioeconomic status. The reasons are complex, including possible roles for such factors as selective migration, risk behaviors, exposure to various stressors, patient attitudes, and geographic variation in health care. This volume, produced by a multidisciplinary panel, considers such possible explanations for racial and ethnic health differentials within an integrated framework. It provides a concise summary of available research and lays out a research agenda to address the many uncertainties in current knowledge. It recommends, for instance, looking at health differentials across the life course and deciphering the links between factors presumably producing differentials and biopsychosocial mechanisms that lead to impaired health.

The second edition of Unraveling the "Model Minority" Stereotype: Listening to Asian American Youth extends Stacey Lee’s groundbreaking research on the educational experiences and achievement of Asian American youth. Lee provides a comprehensive update of social science research to reveal the ways in which the larger structures of race and class play out in the lives of Asian American high school students, especially regarding presumptions that the educational experiences of Koreans, Chinese, and Hmong youth are all largely the same. In her detailed and probing ethnography, Lee presents the experiences of these students in their own words, providing an authentic insider perspective on identity and interethnic relations in an often misunderstood American community. This second edition is essential reading for anyone interested in Asian American youth and their experiences in U.S. schools. Stacey J. Lee is Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of Up Against Whiteness: Race, School, and Immigrant Youth. “Stacey Lee is one of the most powerful and influential scholarly voices to challenge the ‘model minority’ stereotype. Here in its second edition, Lee’s book offers an additional paradigm to explain the barriers to educating young Asian Americans in the 21st century—xenoracism (i.e., racial discrimination against immigrant minorities) intersecting with issues of social class.” —Xue Lan Rong, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill “Breaking important new theoretical and empirical ground, this revised edition is a must read for anyone interested in Asian American youth, race/ethnicity, and processes of transnational migration in the 21st century.” —Lois Weis, State University of New York Distinguished Professor “Clear, accessible, and significantly updated…. The book’s core lesson is as relevant today as it was when the first edition was published, presenting an urgent call to dismantle the dangerous stereotypes that continue to structure inequality in 21st century America.” —Teresa L. McCarty, Alice Wiley Snell Professor of Education Policy Studies, Arizona State University Praise for the First Edition! "Sure to stimulate further research in this area and will be of interest to teachers, teacher educators, researchers, and students alike." —Teachers College Record "A must read for those interested in a different approach in understanding our racial experience beyond the stale and repetitious polemics that so often dominate the public debate." —The Journal of Asian Studies “Well written and jargon-free, this book…documents genuinely candid views from Asian-American students, often laden with their own prejudices and ethnocentrism.” —MultiCultural Review

Eleanor Ty's bold exploration of literature, plays, and film reveals how young Asian Americans and Asian Canadians have struggled with the ethos of self-sacrifice preached by their parents. This new generation's narratives focus on protagonists disenchanted with their daily lives. Many are depressed. Some are haunted by childhood memories of war, trauma, and refugee camps. Rejecting an obsession with professional status and money, they seek fulfillment by prioritizing relationships, personal growth, and cultural success. As Ty shows, these storytellers have done more than reject a narrowly defined road to happiness. They have rejected neoliberal capitalism itself. In so doing, they demand that the rest of us reconsider our outmoded ideas about the so-called model minority.