Growing up like many, Marvel comics played a big part of my childhood. A time before the Internet where I had to learn patience to wake up at 8 AM for the Saturday morning X-men cartoon. I worked extra deliveries just to make the few extra bucks for the latest X-men comic books. I wouldn’t even read them more than once just to keep them in near mint condition for collecting. I put more focus in remembering the content of those comics than any school textbook I picked up in my youth.
Today a legendary creative icon has left the planet today at the age of 95. His imaginative work touched the hearts and minds of the entire planet. Imagine our world today without his work. We have a lot to be thankful for in his commitment. If you know of his work, none other than the man himself quoted the title of this blog post.
Marvel made a really great tribute to Stan Lee. A lot of unseen scenes and inspirational words from the man himself.
Stereotype of Westernized Asian Minority
January 6, 2019
I returned to Toronto from NYC and I received an invitation from an Asian Pacific Community, featuring a panel of some very notable Asian Community leaders. The group is not for profit designed to target Asian and Pacific Asians with the goal of career and professional development, and leadership development.
The undertone is they identify Asians have a shortcoming professionally and this is a community who will offer connections and lessons to level the playing field in the Western culture. While I’m not ignorant to say this struggle exists; I disagree with the platform approach. I’ll get to that point later. But here’s the story of this group.
The backstory
Years ago I attended two of the events hosted by the group. I had spoken to some of the leadership members and requested if I would be interested in a Board Advisory role. I kindly declined as I did not agree with the existing platform, which was offering soft skill lessons to act more personable and force out the inherent meek and shy demeanour that exist in some.
My personal perspective
As a generally confident person, I can pretty much tell when someone is truly confident and when it is an act. When I was simply observing the workshop lead by Asian comedians in the second event, I could tell the members were hanging on every word from speakers. I spoke to a few of them after the event and they were elated how they needed this workshop. They felt this workshop would essentially help lead to personal or professional success. One girl mentioned how she wanted to make friends with coworkers. Two guys wanted to improve how to keep women engaged in conversation.
The problem
I understand the group’s rationale with this approach as habitually that’s how Asians predominantly succeed – take a course, study the shit out of it, then apply. I feel this is completely not the approach to take. The result of following this method is the “confidence” becomes too mechanical. The attendees wouldn’t know better because they aren’t aware of the model minority that has repressed the idea they should be confident in an area western society dictated and stereotyped to be good at.
The suggested approach
Years ago, I read a Times article written by Jack Linshi (https://twitter.com/jacklinshi) titled, The Real Problem When It Comes to Diversity and Asian-American and in the article contained a graph of the largest tech firms comparing tech experts vs leadership roles by ethnicities. We need to be aware of these very important statistics. This should empower us to choose a path in what we need to do and give us the conviction on how we need to present ourselves. Call me a rebel but I don’t like conformity. If I give off the rebellious energy who is outside of the box thinker and a shot caller, that’s the type of people I’ll jive with. Any other people expressing interest will have an agenda. The key is to identify that agenda and give me the confidence in how to act.
Happy Birthday to Me
January 25, 2019