An Anger Game: Asian Stereotypes, White Emotionalities, and Dominance in Leadership
Location
Littlefoot B Room 124B
Start Date
22-4-2023 2:25 PM
End Date
22-4-2023 3:40 PM
Publication Date
2023
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Law | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Description
Asian American women face the “bamboo ceiling” where despite their competence, they lack representation in leadership positions. The current presentation examined the causes of the bamboo ceiling using autoethnography. The study explored an Asian American woman department chair’s failed attempt to be reelected as the chair in a predominantly white department using the emotionality of whiteness and Asian stereotypes as conceptual frameworks. The presenter’s counterstories suggest that not being able to build trustworthy relationships with the faculty was the primary cause of her election loss. She was perceived as “competent but disliked.” Along with racial stereotypes, the white faculty’s emotions played a role in cementing her image as disliked. The faculty were angry at her because she showed control and heightened their sense of being white by bringing up race issues. Their anger was to protect their wounded self, but also a weapon to restore their racial comfort. As a racial subordinate, she became a recipient of their anger, which served to solidify their dominance while making her powerless. In addition, the faculty cared little about the effects of their aggressions, which evidences that the ways Asian Americans are racialized are profoundly different from those of other racial/ethnic minority groups as critical race theory proclaims. The presentation concludes that leadership is hardly race- and gender-neutral and that it embeds a power struggle over which group gets to dominate which group through emotional practices.
Description Format
html
Recommended Citation
Takimoto Amos, Yukari, "An Anger Game: Asian Stereotypes, White Emotionalities, and Dominance in Leadership" (2023). International Conference on Hate Studies. 79.
https://repository.gonzaga.edu/icohs/2023/seventh/79
Full Text of Presentation
wf_no
Media Format
flash_audio
Session Title
Leadership, Othering, and Discrimination
Type
Panel
An Anger Game: Asian Stereotypes, White Emotionalities, and Dominance in Leadership
Littlefoot B Room 124B
Asian American women face the “bamboo ceiling” where despite their competence, they lack representation in leadership positions. The current presentation examined the causes of the bamboo ceiling using autoethnography. The study explored an Asian American woman department chair’s failed attempt to be reelected as the chair in a predominantly white department using the emotionality of whiteness and Asian stereotypes as conceptual frameworks. The presenter’s counterstories suggest that not being able to build trustworthy relationships with the faculty was the primary cause of her election loss. She was perceived as “competent but disliked.” Along with racial stereotypes, the white faculty’s emotions played a role in cementing her image as disliked. The faculty were angry at her because she showed control and heightened their sense of being white by bringing up race issues. Their anger was to protect their wounded self, but also a weapon to restore their racial comfort. As a racial subordinate, she became a recipient of their anger, which served to solidify their dominance while making her powerless. In addition, the faculty cared little about the effects of their aggressions, which evidences that the ways Asian Americans are racialized are profoundly different from those of other racial/ethnic minority groups as critical race theory proclaims. The presentation concludes that leadership is hardly race- and gender-neutral and that it embeds a power struggle over which group gets to dominate which group through emotional practices.