What I learned from Kristi Yamaguchi (NYT)

[skatesindreams]

The author of that article did not attempt to just "define" Kristi by her race/ethnicity, she was instead pointing out how few role models she had as a young girl who were Asian like her. Just like I depended on female role models in my early days in medicine. And that's not racist, biased, or offensive in any way. It's searching finding people who are like you in some way and may have experienced what you have experienced and could provide a pathway for your growth or success.

Those role models often provide inspiration and encouragement to be relied on when "life" is at its' most challenging and difficult.

 

[dr.frog]

And one final thing - my take on reading your posts is frankly that you have been and are still very strongly negatively impacted by your experiences when you were young, and you seem to be insisting that certain aspects of a person should not be used as part of better understanding them as a shield against your hurt. And we can't help with you that.

The only reason why I have mentioned this stuff is the insistence of others *who know nothing about me or my personal circumstances* in this thread that I have lived a life of privilege, had plenty of role models growing up, had no personal experience of appearance-based discrimination, and that I am a raving racist because of my lifelong attempts to follow Dr. King's dream of judging people only by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. I've long since been comfortable with who *I* am and made peace with the past, but I admit that the insults hurled at me in this thread have made me very, very angry.

To reiterate what I said at the beginning: I have a great respect for Yamaguchi and think she is a fine role model for *any** young person, and I am sad that the author of the NYT piece was so fixated on her own skin color that she completely missed that point.

BTW, here is a quote from Mark Lund's book "Frozen Assets" about Yamaguchi:

"Her discipline and the standards she sets are amazing. She's also the lowest maintenance skater I've ever worked with," reports Bezic.

"If I had to pick a role model for kids, I would definitely say Kristi,", declares Brian Boitano. "What she's achieved in skating -- her work ethic, how nice she is to people, how generous she is and how unaffected she is. Everything about Kristi is just so unassuming, just so normal. It's hard to find skaters who are that normal, but Kristi certainly is."

The business community clearly agrees with Boitano. [list of Yamaguchi's endorsement contracts here]

"When I work with a company, I try to give them as much of myself as I can and live up to the contract, and basically treat it in a very professional manner. That's what it deserves," states Kristi.

These are lessons that any kid could benefit from, regardless of their race. Work hard, follow up on your commitments, treat your job with a professional attitude, don't make trouble for the people you work with, etc. That is good stuff.

 

[meggonzo]

To reiterate what I said at the beginning: I have a great respect for Yamaguchi and think she is a fine role model for *any** young person, and I am sad that the author of the NYT piece was so fixated on her own skin color that she completely missed that point.

She never said Yamaguchi wasn't a fine role model for any young person, but the article was more about the author than Yamaguchi. Judging by this comment and some of the other statements you've made and what you think people have said or implied about you, you are the one that is really missing the point.

 

[TheGirlCanSkate]

My son sent me this last night: http://www.nytimes.com/video/opinio...sation-with-asians-on-race.html?smid=fb-share

 

[skatingfan5]

The only reason why I have mentioned this stuff is the insistence of others *who know nothing about me or my personal circumstances* in this thread that I have lived a life of privilege ...

I don't think that anyone in this thread has insisted or even implied that you have "lived a life of privilege" -- "white privilege" is a term that has meaning only wrt race, not anything else. If one has "white privilege" it means that in this (US) society, they have not been subject to discrimination or treated unfairly solely on the basis of their race.

To reiterate what I said at the beginning: I have a great respect for Yamaguchi and think she is a fine role model for *any** young person, and I am sad that the author of the NYT piece was so fixated on her own skin color that she completely missed that point.

And I am sorry that you are so fixated on your "color blindness" that you completely missed the point of why Nicole Chung, the author, was "so fixated on her own skin color" -- she was an adopted Korean girl growing up in a nearly all white town where everyone who she met was white, including her own family. As she put it, she didn't just feel invisible, she felt like a mistake. Chung says that "Kristi Yamaguchi came along right when I needed her, filling a need I had long felt but didn’t understand." and "To see a young Japanese-American woman singing our national anthem with a gold medal around her neck was to feel the entire world I knew shift."

So while Kristi's work ethic, integrity, and commitment are worthy examples for "any kid", the fact that she was an Asian American was what was most meaningful for Nicole Chung, an Asian-American kid. To me it is both perplexing and sad that you seem to have a blind spot that makes you unable to accept her lived experience as valid and feel the need to dismiss it with arguments of why she should have been more impressed with Kristi's work ethic, etc. which would have been unknown to a 9-year-old child watching Kristi awarded the WC gold medal on TV.

 

[Aerobicidal]

She never said Yamaguchi wasn't a fine role model for any young person, but the article was more about the author than Yamaguchi.

I agree. Similarly, it would be hard for me to disagree with a transperson saying the Wachowski siblings are good inspirations for everyone, but could be uniquely inspirational to transpeople.

Here's an article that summarizes contradictory interpretations of MLK's "content of their character" quote.

Personally, I agree with Martin Luther King III and disagree with what the article calls the "conservative" take on the statement.

Have we reached the point where there's an equal playing field for everyone despite transphobia, homophobia, sexism, racism, Islamophobia, and every other similar force? I won't speak for MLK or the Wachowskis, but I say no.

 

[Deleted member 221]

Many Americans are stereotyped into "because you are X, you are expected to be Y, and not expected to be Z."

The point of the author is that she had never seen Asian-American women on TV, and never believed that an Asian-American woman could be "idolized" by America until Kristi Yamaguchi came along. And there's a ton of hard evidence beyond her anecdote from a variety of sources. Yamaguchi is a role model for all, AND she broke barriers for Asian American women.

Dr. Frog is also right that female engineers, even now, are a rare breed and face all kind of prejudices and societal pressures that male engineers do not. There are also many people, who despite being white, face discrimination and other ill effects based on any number of things. It's never going to be possible to protect all of them under any system.

I believe in being color blind in how I treat people, but I also believe that certain groups have had and still have society rigged against them. For what it's worth, I do not believe that Asian Americans are one of those groups, and do not think Asian Americans, aside from a small group of southeast Asians, need any type of special protection under the law the way that other groups, e.g. African Americans, do. That said, Asian Americans, like many other groups, benefit from and should celebrate people of their shared background breaking barriers.

 

[Yazmeen]

Dr. Frog is also right that female engineers, even now, are a rare breed and face all kind of prejudices and societal pressures that male engineers do not. There are also many people, who despite being white, face discrimination and other ill effects based on any number of things. It's never going to be possible to protect all of them under any system.

A small good point to interject: my husband has been active in judging and working at high school robotics competitions (he is a PE/EE), and he's been thrilled to see how many girls are involved and how many have stated they want to be engineers in the future.

 

[VGThuy]

I believe in being color blind in how I treat people, but I also believe that certain groups have had and still have society rigged against them. For what it's worth, I do not believe that Asian Americans are one of those groups, and do not think Asian Americans, aside from a small group of southeast Asians, need any type of special protection under the law the way that other groups, e.g. African Americans, do. That said, Asian Americans, like many other groups, benefit from and should celebrate people of their shared background breaking barriers.

Hmmm...I can't say I totally agree with this separation in this way because it's saying society hasn't rigged itself against East Asians and South Asians, which I don't find historically or presently true even if they have seemed to benefit more than other groups due the actually damaging model minority myth and have been used as pawns, so to speak. I also think there's more than just a "small group" of Southeast Asians that fit in with other groups that need "special protection" based on similarities in educational, vocational, and incarceration rates. I do like breaking down the group and exposing the differences that reside inside that group.

I think you may be talking about affirmative-action policies with the above-referenced comment when you talk about "special protection", which is not what I'm thinking about with my preceding sentences. Although I recognize Affirmative Action is a loaded topic in of itself, I rather not use this thread to go more in-depth with it. If you're not talking about that, I am wondering what you mean by "special protection" under the law. If not, then are you talking about anti-discrimination laws?

 

[Jot the Dot Dot]

Back when the original Star Trek series first aired, a young 9 year old black girl Caryn Johnson was amazed at the character of Lt. Uhura. "Look, there's a black woman on TV who's not a maid!" She would grow up to be a stand-up comedian, actress & talk-show host under the stage name 'Whoopi Goldberg', portraying the bartender Guinan on the spinoff series Star Trek: The Next Generation. While I would say that Kristi as a skater and as a person, would be a good role model for any kid, I can see how she would be special for young Asian-Americans (or Canadians, etc.). Add to that, Kristi has been exemplary in her conduct in public.

 

[VALuvsMKwan]

Back when the original Star Trek series first aired, a young 9 year old black girl Caryn Johnson was amazed at the character of Lt. Uhura. "Look, there's a black woman on TV who's not a maid!" She would grow up to be a stand-up comedian, actress & talk-show host under the stage name 'Whoopi Goldberg', portraying the bartender Guinan on the spinoff series Star Trek: The Next Generation. While I would say that Kristi as a skater and as a person, would be a good role model for any kid, I can see how she would be special for young Asian-Americans (or Canadians, etc.). Add to that, Kristi has been exemplary in her conduct in public.

That is the exact story that I was talking about in an earlier post, along with Nichelle Nichols' story of her career-changing conversation with Dr. King.

 

[attyfan]

IMO, it also is important when the "role model" is in the public eye because it teaches others. There were not a lot of Jews when I was growing up in San Diego (mid-'60s), but when Sandy Koufax didn't pitch the opening game of the World Series, I stopped getting odd looks for taking time off of school for the High Holy Days -- because he taught the whole country that they were important.

 

[Deleted member 19433]

It's understandable that people might find particular inspiration from someone who is similar to them in some way who has accomplished something admirable, especially if that "some way" was an aspect of themselves that often made them feel isolated, weird, or not as capable or worthy. If you are continually being or feeling brought down or singled out in a negative or limiting way because of a particular characteristic, it's understandable that you would identify more strongly with other people sharing that characteristic, especially in the moments when you're feeling particularly brought down. It's important sometimes not to feel alone and to realize that it's possible to overcome barriers that seem to be holding us back.

Now, if the person only admired or respected the accomplishments of people who were similar to them in a particular way, then that would be a negative thing (and could actually be racist, or sexist, etc.). It reminds me a bit about an editorial I read recently about why boys should read books about girls (here: http://ideas.ted.com/why-boys-should-read-girl-books/). We should look for admirable qualities and accomplishments in people who aren't like us too, and try to understand other perspectives.

It reminded me of an article by a black male journalist who was a figure skating fan and who also idolized Kristi Yamaguchi and Nancy Kerrigan (here that one is: http://www.fsuniverse.net/forum/ind...y-and-i’m-obsessed-with-figure-skating.90951/ ). I remembered it because it struck me how he particularly idolized a couple of female athletes of very different backgrounds from him, when there were many black male athletes in other sports that it would've been more typical for him to idolize. In fact he was treated as strange because of that unusual interest. Maybe he helped other people not to feel so alone by expressing that aspect of himself.

I also don't think it would be a good thing to admire someone only for a particular characteristic like race, sex, sexual orientation, or disability (which reminds me of this funny TED talk by Stella Young, who sadly has since passed away https://www.ted.com/talks/stella_young_i_m_not_your_inspiration_thank_you_very_much?language=en ), but I don't think that's what's going on here. She admired Kristi because of her amazing accomplishments (and it should be at least implicitly understood that to accomplish what Kristi did requires an immense amount of dedication, which is admirable in itself). The fact that she was an American of Asian descent just made the author feel more of a personal connection to her, for reasons that she explained very eloquently (and I tried to above, much more vaguely and less eloquently).

 

[overedge]

I am deadly serious about this. Here is an article on this very subject that appeared in a scholarly Computer Science journal in 1989 about one computer scientist's long campaign to self-classify himself as a "mongrel". It's quite long, but almost entirely non-technical, and quite funny.

[snip]

Back in 1989, I decided this made sense -- classifying people by race is just an excuse for bigotry. So I refuse to play along, and I invite and encourage others to refuse to give their sanction to it, as well.

You did notice that all of his examples are where it was clearly wrong to ask for racial identification - e.g. there is no reason to have "race" on a driver's license. And there is a huge difference between self-identification with an ethnic/racial group (which is what the NYTimes article alludes to) and having someone else arbitrarily "classify [you] by race" .

The author of the article can call himself a mongrel, you can call yourself a frog, whatever. But your doing that doesn't erase the reality that different ethnicities exist. Nor does it erase the reality that there is discrimination based on those ethnicities. And that discrimination comes from other people's perceptions of what you "are", regardless of what group you personally identify yourself as belonging to.

Dr. King made his speech about "the content of their character" because of black people being attacked and murdered and discriminated against because of their ethnicity. Do you seriously think that all those problems would have gone away if black people had written "human" intead of "black" on their census forms?

Your blatant and wilful denial of reality doesn't erase discrimination. It perpetuates it, by being completely unrealistic about how discrimination works.

 

[Simone411]

@dr.frog it was brought to my attention regarding something I posted on another page in this thread. In no way whatsoever did I mean to say in so many words for you "not to post" in this thread. That was not the meaning of what I stated in my post addressed to you. I never said for you not to post and I don't have the right to say that to anyone.

My intention and what I meant was to let you know that you were not the only one on this message board that's had it hard in life, and not to think you were. It was not my intention to tell you not to post. I would never suggest or tell anyone something like that.

So, my apologies if that's how my post has looked to you and others.

 

[CantALoop]

Even though I'm male, I can relate to many of the author's sentiments - in fact, watching Kristi Yamaguchi and Midori Ito was a big reason why I took up figure skating.

As a part-Asian kid growing up in the 80s, I didn't see very many Asian-Americans prominently featured in sports and/or TV, or if I did happen to see one, they were in the background or nowhere in contention of a title. So of course it caught my attention when 1992 came along and I saw this amazing sport that was not only artistic and entertaining, but wow, there was a Japanese-American girl who was not only number one in the nation, but in the world!

I know I'm also not the only one who feels this way, Kristi inspired many of the local kids in Hawai'i, and she remains a popular figure in the islands even though she's originally from NorCal. Many of the kids on the playground were inspired by this athletic, eloquent, and fashionable girl who looked like she could have easily been one of our neighbors or cousins. Maybe we were thinking "Hey, if this girl who looks like us can make it to the top of her sport, maybe we can do it too!"

I agree that a role model doesn't necessarily have to be of the same race, but it's a lot easier to find inspiration with someone you can relate and identify with on some level...in our case, Kristi's Asian-American background was something that made her both unique and relatable to us.

 

[dr.frog]

Just to respond to a couple points here.

(1) It absolutely is a legal requirement in the US for companies with more than 100 employees to collect and report racial statistics about their workforce to the federal government. It is called the EEO-1 survey and you can find information about it here.

https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/faq.cfm

Here are sample self-identification forms for employees to fill out.

https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/sample_self_identification.cfm

Note that they don't allow you to choose "Other" as your ethnicity, and if you decline to voluntarily self-identify, the employer is required to use "visual observation" to decide your ethnicity for you, per the FAQ linked above -- they are not allowed to list you as unknown, or omit you from their database. I believe they are also required to collect information about gender as well as ethnicity, and the choices are limited to "male" and "female", so you are out of luck if you are intersex, genderless, etc

I came to my current job via an acquisition, and had to go through this rigamarole. I declined to self-identify, and I am a remote worker so never visited any of my new employer's offices or met anyone from their HR department, and how were they going to do any "visual observation" to know what color I am? They asked me to send them a photo. Now, they do not normally take photos of employees or require employees to submit them for any other reason; there was only this one specific purpose why they requested one. So I sent them a nice picture of a frog, and my manager promised to back me up and confirm that yes, I do look rather froglike. I have no idea what HR reported to the feds. It is none of the government's business what color or gender I am, and since it has nothing to do with how well I do my job, it's none of my employer's business either.

(2) As to why I refuse to self-identify by race: I have a dream, too. I have a dream that people will stop committing genocide and acts of war and terror against one another if we all commit to thinking of ourselves and others only as members of the same human race, without further division into "people who look like me" and "people who are strange and different and maybe even not fully human". I know it is largely a symbolic act, but it is one I must make for the sake of my own conscience. And I do encourage other people to seriously consider what purpose racial classification really serves in our society and whether you want to voluntarily collaborate with those purposes.

 

[overedge]

@dr.frog And again, there is a huge difference, that you don't acknowledge, between collecting demographic information for irrelevant purposes and for the purpose of fighting discrimination. Without knowing the representation of different demographic groups in their work force, governments (and other employers) are going to have a hard time telling if discrimination is happening in their workplaces, or figuring out ways to stop it.

If you personally don't want to participate in that kind of data collection, fine. But your personal disdain for it that doesn't mean it doesn't have a valid purpose. And it's *way* out of line for you to suggest that people who do provide that data are contributing to racial/ethnic divisions in society, or supporting "racial classification" being used in the wrong way. Those people's beliefs about what they're doing are as valid as yours.

 

[meggonzo]

@dr.frog i think you do have good intentions; however, most of your points have already been answered in this thread. When POC have been sharing their own experiences and why they identify with the author's story, and you've been dismissive to them and claimed the author is racist, not to mention making jokes about Hitler, its quite rude to say the least.