The Asians Shine – Musings of a Texas Gal in NYC
Sep 3 2007

Following up on The Art of War for Women written by a Chinese woman Chin-Ning Chu post, I am now going to write about the “Same-Race Discussion Circles: How Are You Powerful?” session that I referred to at the end of the post called From the Mouths of Men.

After we completed the Instant Polling session at the Working Mother Multicultural Conference (POWER: OWN IT. — USE IT. SHARE IT.), we separated into groups (e.g., Asian, African American, Hispanic, American Indian, Caucasian, and Men) and met in different rooms.  I was born in Sri Lanka (i.e., South Asia) so I was part of the Asian group.   In our rooms we then broke up into several groups of 6 to 8 people and were instructed to do the following:

1. Introduce yourself by saying your name and briefly answering the question: How am I powerful and where do I leverage it the most?
2. In the workplace how does my racial identity affect my power?
3. In the workplace what are the things I do to limit or trade off my power?

We discussed those questions in our smaller groups and then shared our answers while the moderators (Deepika Bajaj, President of Invincibelle and Janice Won, Owner of Inclusion Strategies & Diversity Solutions) could write them on a big flip pad.  They then asked who would be interested in presenting our findings to the large group (i.e., 700 people) during lunch.  Of course I volunteered because I try to take on any opportunity I can to practice my public speaking skills.  Two other women also volunteered.  One was from India and the other was from China.  I volunteered to share our findings on question #2. 

We ran late in the breakout session so I was starving!  I sat down to eat thinking they would call us up when they wanted our group to talk.  When I got up to go to the ladies room…thinking I had some time…I saw one of the other women on my team already standing in line next to the stage.  My jaw literally dropped!  I had to delay my trip to the restroom and make a beeline to the stage.  We went on after the Hispanic, African American and Native American groups.  The Indian woman started first, then I went second, and the Chinese woman addressed the third question.   Usually when I speak, I’m lucky to remember anything else that’s happening and unfortunately since I didn’t take down the summary notes for questions 1 and 3, I can only share with you the Asian group’s thoughts on question 2 which were:

• It’s a great thing to be Asian in a global environment
• When we do speak people tend to listen (I jokingly asked the question “Are you listening?” after I made that statement which got a chuckle from the audience) 🙂
• When we are in higher positions people tend to give us more credibility as they feel we ‘know our stuff.’ (e.g., Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo)
• We are hard workers and don’t tend to need a lot of help
• We are generally perceived as doers vs. leaders; specialists vs. managers.  In other words ‘worker bees’ vs. ‘queen bees.’
• We are underrepresented in the minority model of many companies.  Asian groups/networks don’t usually exist like they do for African American or Hispanic groups.  Therefore, we don’t tend to offer as much support to each other as we should.
• Many people aren’t clear what the term ‘Asian’ means.  For example Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.) or South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, etc.).  Usually when you say ‘Asian,’ people think of Oriental Asians.

I experienced the last point during the conference itself.  The next day after the From the Mouths of Men session, I was asking an African American woman a question in the lobby area, and she said something like ‘weren’t you the one wearing that bright blue shirt that spoke on behalf of the Asian group?‘  I say ‘yes‘ and she said ‘the first thing that crossed my mind was: why is she up there, she’s not Asian!’  I smiled and said that’s why people don’t know what to do with us South Asians!  But hey, I wouldn’t want to be anything else. 😉

Next up on the conference:

• Julia Hubbel and The Hub Factor
• Summary – JP Morgan Chase

Author: Aruni | Filed under: conferences, diversity, new york city | 1 Comment »

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