Furious at my fellow Asian mental health professionals for harping on “racism” when the real problem is parenting. Fck everyone who backlashed against Amy Chu calling out tiger parenting

I’m a 31F mental health therapist specializing in asian american suicide. I’m about to present to my state’s suicide council to advocate for more awareness into the tiger parenting dynamic that causes suicide as someone who attempted when I was 16. I’m currently trying to gather research from the heads of my field (the American Psychological Association) and i. am. pissed. Every research article published by Asian American psychologists says the root cause of AA mental health is… racism by white people. They talk about white people causing the model minority pressure. WTF?! That pressure doesn’t come from THEM! It comes from our parents!

Yes we experience racism. But that is not the core of our issues as Asian American kids. Also mind you, when I was in school for my BA degree in psych (2011-2015) the research papers and articles I had to study in school NEVER used the asian demographic in their studies! it was always blacks and latinos! and now that we have representation its fucking skewed and not representative of what we actually go through. it was so invalidating and infuriating to read.

This is ripple effect of what happened in 2011 when Amy Chua came out with her book and outted the concept of tiger parenting. For the first time someone named what we were all going through. And we had something out there we can grab hold of and DO something about it.

But what did the Asian American community do instead?

They. rejected. it. They did the whole NoT eVeRy AsIAn. They made it a SIN to talk about the very real shit that is posted on here every single day. They hid our struggles because the optics looked so bad. They did the exact problem that’s causing problems in our community: shut up and keep quiet. I couldn’t fucking believe the backlash. I and so many other Asian American kids tried killing ourselves because of this tiger parenting shit. I’m a fucking therapist specializing in suicide for Asian Americans because no therapist in my 20 years of trying to get help for this problem know what the fuck to do.

I’m so livid. I’m out here specializing in AA suicide, about to talk to my state council and trying to find facts and research to justify more money into the nuances of asian american mental health and our own people are hurting us.

Just had to rant and get it off my chest. Now off work on my presentation and do better than these wimps.

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