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United We Stand Separated We Perish by Tiffany Chang
What is the status of our Asian community in U. S.? There is no problem that we have had many outstanding individuals who are very successful in each area of professions. For the view point on the whole body, the Asian community is probably backward a distance away from other racial communities.
In the federal government, the cabinet of President between 1997 and 1998 had only two Asians in the main and secondary levels among the 250 people. They were only in the lowest level. Among the 845 judges only 7 of them were from Asia.*1
In colleges which has been famed as "big capital of idealists," normally, the administrators are promoted from the people who are colleagues working for the higher education. From the analysis on the basis of races, a comparison of the rate between the administrators and colleagues will show the opportunity to climb up in the adminitrative ladder of each race. The black people's rate was .21, that means there were 21 administrative personnel among the 100. Indians was .20; white people was .36; Hispanics was .15; but Asians was .06. Obviously, the bad situation was for Asians.*2
In private business, there was only one highest executive of Asian among the so called "500 Enterprises." We can find that there are highest executives who are Asian most only in those business founded by themselves. From the above statistical data, we were acknowledged that the Asian community owns 3.5% of American population has less than 1.0% people on the decision level in the government or private business. In another word, there is much less than 1/3 opportunity to be promoted to the decision level for the Asian people by comparable to other races. This is a serious problem that we should take care of.*3
It is worth for us to unite and struggle once when we know our Asian status and situation. Lots of other racial people got promoted more fastly than Asians in the public and private sectors. This is another reason that we Asian community should more be united for the best guarantee to climb up in the higher ladder. We Asian are mostly good by nature, but we have never competed against any other race without on the basis of knowledge and talent. We follow the founded spirit of U. S. as a country. Here everybody has an equal opportunity for development of his or her own business in spite of the discrimination of classes , religons, sex, and races. What we should ask for is set up on the basis of equal opportunity by virtue of humane, reasonable, and legal. How can we attain this purpose? The best policy is to unite each other with good work performance, reasonable human relations, and better American education.
In the recent six years, Asian communities have contributed significant result to the winning of elected important officials in Nevada. Asian Community has won recognition for contribution to Nevada by American mainstream. The main reason for this recognition is the great and cooperative wisdom and effort that the Asian communities have continuously participated and offered to the mainstream society. ____________
*Bi-kuang Cheng, "The Union of Asians and the Promotion of Status.' Daily Central News - International Edition, July 16, 1999. (in Chinese) *2 Ibid. *3 Ibid.