zt 亞裔孩子為什麽自殺？

Why Are Asian American Kids Killing Themselves?

Editor’s Note: This guest article is by George Qiao

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Asian American college students are 1.6 times more likely than all others to make a serious suicide attempt. They are 3 times less likely to seek out professional therapy or counseling. Across all students, about 24% are estimated to experience suicidal ideation at some point in their time at school. It’s safe to assume that the proportion for Asian American students is even higher. When I entered university in 2014, Asian American student deaths at Yale, MIT, and UPenn were making national headlines. Recently, the death of Luke Tang at Harvard University prompted a university-wide conference on Asian American mental illness and the filming of Looking for Luke, which follows Luke’s parents’ life after their son’s passing.

Increasing national focus on Asian American youth’s suicide rates has coincided with the growth of our mainstream liberal political movement. Mental health initiatives are becoming ubiquitous at large universities and in Asian neighborhoods. Conferences such as Harvard’s attract hundreds of participants from all over the country. The popular image of the number-crunching Asian robot has broken down. Ali Wong’s jokes about miscarriage and Eddie Huang’s body-empowering line of panda themed underwear herald a new era of vulnerability. Asian women even took center stage on Logic’s performance at the Video Music Awards. At the center of this whirlpool of attention is the search for an explanation for our community’s struggles with mental illness.

The dominant model we’ve come up with is that Asian kids collapse in a pressure cooker of parental expectations and cultural stigma. The story goes that Asian parents raise their children ignorant of the stress their expectations cause. Immigrant narratives overwhelm students with the impossible demand of a return on interest. Asian kids are stretched so thin that only a lucky few don’t suffer some kind of breakdown by the end of high school. Hanging over every family is a strict cultural network that, since the days of Confucius and the Buddha, discourages emotion and favors self-control through hard work. Refusing to quit this outdated thinking causes families to miss out on a sense of national belonging, placing further strain on children. Arriving at college, Asian students are neither able to adapt to the competitive environment nor adjust to a community where emotional openness is accepted. Conversations with parents, already difficult at home, become clogged with intergenerational static. Eventually, the stress erodes away their ability to endure, leading to anxiety, depression, and, in the long run, suicidal ideation.

This was the model explored when I attended Harvard’s conference last spring. Hundreds of students, parents, and educators packed the reception rooms. A screening of Looking for Luke was the first event of the day. Afterwards, attendees were split into breakout sessions, which focused on how parents can support their children as they move through high school and transition into difficult college environments. Biting down on croissants and fidgeting in their dresses, parents expressed surprise and guilt as they were told of their generation’s failure. However, the conference ended on a positive note, as keynote speakers reassured attendees that students’ mental health struggles could be overcome as long as parents made an effort to change their ways.

I recognized those looks of surprise and guilt on my own parents’ face when I told them about the panic attacks I suffered in my freshman year at college. They had been talking about Luke, about how they didn’t understand why he had done it. By this time I was well versed in the model. Across the marble counter in our kitchen where we typically chatted during dinner, I accused them of failing to care about my struggles in high school and criticized their English proficiency, which I imagined to be the root cause of our difficulties in conversation. In that moment I saw them as apostles of a foreign spirit I wanted no part of. I wanted them to see my self-hatred, and understand that it was a reflection of their failure to truly integrate into America. Their ignorance of Luke mirrored their ignorance of their son, and so I told them until my throat grew hoarse.

I am not surprised that our movement, which has come far enough to recognize the gendered racism in Asian-white relationships, the supremacist philosophy of assimilationist politics, and the vital role of affirmative action in our fight against oppression, seems to embrace a model of mental illness that cuts down immigrant narratives and identifies Asian cultures as a source of weakness rather than strength. In the fight to assert ourselves, a colonial, anti-Asian ideology remains rooted in our memories of pain. I don’t know what I expected from my parents. My mother left the room. My father looked angry but didn’t say anything. The impression my words left on them stunted our conversations for weeks.

That high expectations, responsible parents, and strong connections to cultural backgrounds in Asian American families give rise to suicidal children is a uniquely American paradox. However, we should not be surprised. Model minority stereotypes and racist rhetoric around families of color lead Asian children to associate strong families with Asian-ness. Furthermore, America’s denigration of Asian men, fetishization of Asian women, and general xenophobia toward Asian peoples link Asian-ness to badness. Asian American children are therefore brought up believing that their families are bad. For white families and families of color, responsible and firm parenting is celebrated, while for Asian families, they are shameful and problematic.

An outpouring of this sort of hypocrisy emerged in the national response to Amy Chua’s The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother in 2011. The ideas that Chua put forth are not novel: children are not responsible enough to make decisions regarding their future, good parenting must be firm and confident, hard work is necessary for children even if it’s not fun. Hundreds of parenting books have been written on the same topics. What drew fire was the fact that her writing was about Asian children. Positive responses to the book declared that non-Asian parents should adopt Chua’s recommendations, whereas negative reviews condemned Chua for the imagined harm that her parenting was surely taking on her children. White parents would have the intuition and know-how to implement Chua’s parenting strategically. Asian parents, emotionally distant and lacking fluency in American ways, are surely taking it too far.

Strong families and hard-working children are not unique to Asian culture. Academic achievement is closely tied to parents’ immigration status, parents’ socioeconomic class, and parents’ education level for all racial groups (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3442927/). Higher education level, socioeconomic class, and immigration status all correspond to higher achievement for children of all racial groups. The Asian population’s achievement is a reflection of its higher proportion of privileged parents due to America’s skewed immigration policies. That privileged children perform better than their underprivileged counterparts is a black mark on America’s schools and treatment of its people. To believe that Asian children are inherently better at school due to their race or cultural background is to buy into a racist hierarchy.

Only Asian American children have significantly higher rates of suicidal ideation and depression. Perhaps it has to do with the stigma against discussing mental illness in Asian communities. However, even rudimentary research into other communities of color reveals that such stigmas are not unique to Asians. Perhaps there it’s an inexplicable but somehow intrinsic quality of Asian cultures. However comparisons reveal that Asian American college suicide rates are on par with, if not higher than, rates in Asian countries. In places where “Asian culture” is most concentrated, suicide is not noticeably higher. It follows that Asian culture is not some kind of mentally destructive force.

The narrative of harmful Asian-ness halts immigrant parents’ sense of belonging in this country, and widens the false dissociation Asian Americans feel between being happy and being Asian. When I blamed my parents for the harm that my environment causes me, I not only did nothing to resolve my problems, but also drove deeper the generational wedge between us. On a whole-population level, this problematizates Asian-ness and fractures any possibility of cohesiveness between generations. The end result is stagnation of our formation of a sense of self. In a country that deems us worthless, the maintenance of our racial selves is like trying to light a match in a thunderstorm. Seeing our parents and our heritage as the cause of that worthlessness only makes things worse.

The idea that Asian families and Asian-ness are uniquely harmful to Asian Americans needs to be abandoned. If we refuse to examine the way that this country’s prejudices condition us to be in conflict with our own parents, we will never be able to heal and thrive as a community. Strong conceptions of the racial self, connection to racial communities, and understanding of systems of oppression have been shown to correlate with positive self-esteem and reduced risk of depression in other communities of color. Although it will be the same for us, we must do the appropriate work.

We must shift our blame onto the model minority, perpetual foreigner, and Orientalist stereotypes that constitute our oppression. Despite our familiarity with these tropes, we are unable to believe they produce real consequences on our well-being. They are the root of our hypocritical views on Asian families and mental health resources’ failure to earn the trust of Asian clients.

When a therapist or counselor believes that Asian Americans suffer solely because of familial pressures, they buy into the idea that Asian families are unnatural and inhuman. When they refuse to consider the effects of racially rooted stress on their client’s mental state, they uphold the outdated belief that Asians cannot possibly be affected by racism. Little wonder that the follow-up rate for Asian Americans who do visit therapists is virtually nonexistent. At some level, we understand that heaping criticism on our families neither helps us understand ourselves nor provides a practical solution for our problems.

While the demand for professionals trained to address the needs of Asian Americans is widespread, this training lacks specificity. What training exists, following the pressure cooker model, has counselors locating the source of the problem within Asian communities. The one and only time I visited my college’s mental health services, a white lady reassured me that she’d seen lots of Asian students with “similar problems”, and encouraged me to “be more open” in my relationship with my parents. I left without a clue as to what I was actually supposed to do. While I have no confidence that America’s mostly white population of mental health care providers can truly embrace and have conversations about race and mental illness, some training is better than none. The increasing diversification of the population of care-providers also gives me hope that services will improve.

I no longer want to listen to the argument that Asian suicides are somehow to be expected given our “culture”. I do not want to open the latest heartbreaking email and weigh the odds that the name will be like my own, or imagine how a mother crumples with foreign guilt added to her despair. The patronizing tone with which white experts explain their theory about our families enrages me; I am deaf to news articles and think pieces that, year after year, draw the same tired conclusions about our community. I want to believe that my own children will one day be proud of who they are, and will not flinch when they hear me speak my mother tongue to a friend on the street. The wounds and words I spoke into existence with my parents should never have existed in a country that loves its people, but I must repair them.

The movement to drain the sea of self-hatred in our community has begun in earnest. But we cannot love ourselves if we do not first affirm our love for our families in the face of America’s demands that we toss them away. Amputating our anti-Asian views on our health is difficult when we were raised to believe them. But they must be removed if we are to heal. Our lives depend on it.

亞裔孩子為什麽自殺？   喬少華 （George S. Qiao） 哈佛大學四年級學生   英文原文 https://planamag.com/why-are-asian-american-kids-killing-themselves-477a3f6ea3f2 出國30年—萬維讀者網成立20周年大型有獎征文（[e-mail]）   譯者的話 譯者：喬人立（小樵大夫） 寄自美國 正 如編輯部征文通告所言，定居他鄉的我們每談到出國，心中難免都會隨之湧起一陣感慨滄桑。二十年，三十年的光陰已然流逝，幾人得暇回首當年？可是，隨著時光 流去，還有另外一件事情和出國既密不可分卻又往往不會立刻自動聯係起來：在這二三十年裏，我們的孩子們在我們這些父母帶領之下，在我們為他們設立的特殊環 境之中，已經開始以他們的特殊身份走向社會，走向所居住國的社會。 我 們自己出國時，無論對未來怎樣憧憬，肯定都做好了艱苦奮鬥的充分準備，其中包括了各種各樣的忍辱負重。也許因為準備充分吧，很多諸如玻璃天花板的障礙，或 者直呼為種族歧視，並不足以對我們形成傷害，甚至連傷害的感覺都產生不了。也許正因如此，我們何嚐真正將自己視為“外國人”，視自己為“非中國人 （non－Chinese）”？稍加留心就不難發現，我們大多數人仍然習慣以“老中”自稱，仍然以“中國人”作為內心的身份認同。 可是，我們的孩子呢？他們的身份認同，他們在自己在“祖國”居住國社會中的地位與角色是什麽樣子呢？雖然很多父母都毫不猶豫的說自己留在異鄉是為了孩子，因為父母們毫不懷疑異鄉的環境對孩子肯定更好，可是孩子們是否因此而幸福快樂呢？ 無需提醒，近年來亞裔孩子們頻發的自我傷害已經到了觸目驚心的程度，讓人警覺，不得不思考原因是什麽，卻又不得不為百思不得其解而困擾。 孩 子們自己已經在思考了。喬少華的文章是以英文發表的，讀後感觸很深。翻譯成中文再讀就更進一步意識到，孩子們不僅有他們自己的視角，而且有父母完全沒有想 到的見解。孩子們是否視自己為“中國人”，家長們又是否應該支持孩子們做“中國人”還是做“非中國人”？這是一個非常尖銳的問題，在很多人也許需要鼓起勇 氣才能麵對之。可是，如同喬少華文章議論所觸及的，這個問題很可能是亞裔孩子不快樂的根本原因，甚至關乎著我們的“生存”。倘若如此，每一位亞裔家長，無 論是否情願，就都不得不認真想一想了。我們所做的一切不都是為了孩子嗎？ 總之，這是一篇說給同族亞裔人的話，亞裔的孩子們，亞裔的家長們。   亞裔美國孩子為什麽自殺？   喬少華 （George S. Qiao） 哈佛大學四年級學生 亞 裔美國大學生認真嚐試自殺的可能性是其他所有人的1.6倍，而他們尋求專業治療或輔導谘詢的可能性卻要低3倍。在所有學生中，約有24％的人在在校期間的 某個時間點會生發自殺意念，亞裔學生的比例應該更高。我2014年進入大學時，耶魯，麻省理工和賓大的亞裔美國學生死亡人數成為當時的全國頭條新聞。最 近，哈佛學生盧克·唐（Luke Tang）去世，哈佛為此召開了一場全校範圍關於亞裔精神健康的會議，並且開拍了“尋找盧克”的電影，裏麵追蹤了盧克父母在兒子逝世後的生活。 隨 著美國主流社會自由主義政治運動勢頭上升，亞裔美國青少年的高自殺率也在逐漸引起全國注意。例如，在大學和亞裔社區中，到處可見提醒心理健康的宣傳。哈佛 大學的這次會議吸引了來自全國各地的數百人到場。以往流行的隻鑽數學的“亞裔機器人”形象開始破裂。黃阿麗（Ali Wong）的關於流產的笑話和黃頤銘（Eddie Huang）以突出身體部位為主題的熊貓牌內褲則又為亞裔人開啟了一個受人奚落的新時代。在音樂錄影頒獎儀式上歌手“邏輯”（一位為自殺幸存者發聲的流行 歌手）的表演中，亞裔女性甚至占據了舞台中心。無論如何，在這一場注意力高漲的潮流中心是對我們族裔精神問題成因的探索。  迄 今為止，所能提出的主導模式是，亞裔孩子們在父母高期望與僵硬傳統的高壓鍋中崩潰。具體說，亞裔父母撫養子女時忽略了他們期望過高所帶來的壓力。在各種移 民故事中，滿眼都是不可能實現為自己所承受的期望投資做出相應回報的學生們。亞洲孩子們的弦被過度緊繃，到高中畢業時腦筋沒有崩潰的幾乎剩不下幾個。每個 亞裔家庭都籠罩在一個致密的大網之下，從孔子和佛祖的時代就已經開始，我們的文化傳統鼓勵人們通過辛勤勞動實現對自己命運的掌控，同時排斥發展個人興趣。 因為不願意擺脫這種過時的傳統，使得亞裔家庭無法形成對所居住國家的歸屬感，進一步給孩子帶來壓力。到了大學，亞洲學生既不能適應競爭的環境，又不能融入 崇尚態度開放的大學氣氛之中。在家時與父母的對話已經很困難，進入大學更幹脆陷入了代與代之間交流停止的狀態。最終，壓力侵蝕了他們的忍受力，導致焦慮， 抑鬱，以及最終的自殺意念。 我 去年春天參加的那場哈佛大會所探索的主導模式就是這樣。數百名學生，家長和教育工作者擠滿了禮堂。“尋找盧克”的放映是當天的第一個節目。之後，與會者進 行了分組會議，重點討論在從高中過渡進入大學環境的困難期間，家長應該如何支持他們的孩子。當家長們得知他們這代人的教育失敗時，嘴裏的羊角麵包停止了嚼 咀，也不再析析瑣瑣的整理衣服，而開始表達出驚訝與內疚。還好，會議結局還算正麵，主旨演講人向參會者們保證，隻要父母努力改變方式，學生們的心理健康問 題就可以得到克服。 家 長們臉上那些驚訝與內疚的樣子我在我父母都曾經見過。當我告訴他們我在大學一年級時經曆的心理恐慌時，我父母的表情就是同樣的驚訝和愧疚。 他們一直在同情盧克，卻又怎麽也不明白他為什麽這樣做。所以，哈佛大會上討論的模式我早已非常熟悉。 隔著我家廚房的大理石台麵，我們晚餐時聊天的地方，我指責過我的父母沒有關心我在高中時的掙紮，批評他們的英語水平，將其歸為我與他們之間交流困難的根 源。 在那一刻，他們在我眼裏就好像是人們避之不及的異教徒。 我希望他們看到我的自我仇恨，並且想讓他們明白這是他們不能真正融入美國的一個反映。 他們對盧克的無知反映了他們對自己兒子的無知，我費盡力氣告訴他們這些，直到我的喉嚨變得嘶啞。 如 今，我們的（維權）運動已經走得很遠，我們認識到了亞裔－白人關係中的摻有性別因素的種族主義，同化政治中的至上主義哲學，以及在反壓迫的平權運動中我們 的重要角色。可是，我卻並不意外，在所有這些運動中精神疾病都被刻劃為移民形象的組成成分，並且將亞洲文化傳統視為軟弱，而不是力量，的來源。在樹立自我 的鬥爭中，殖民時代的反亞裔思想帶來的痛苦仍然紮根於我們的記憶之中。我不知道我能期望我父母什麽。我媽媽離開了房間。我的父親看起來很生氣，但沒有說什 麽。我的言語留給他們的印象使我們的談話連續數周難以繼續。 亞 裔美國家庭中的高期望值，過度負責任的父母，以及與自己文化傳統的強大聯係導致了亞裔孩子自殺乃是一個獨特的美國悖論。但是，我們不應該因此感到驚訝。 “模範少數族裔”的刻板印象和有色人種躲不開的種族主義言論引領亞裔兒童把重視家庭視為一種亞洲特色。此外，美國社會對亞洲男子的普遍貶低的同時卻對亞裔 女性倍加追捧，以及普遍存在的針對亞洲人的排外心理都把“亞洲特色”與劣質聯在一起。因此，在美國生長的亞裔孩子自小就在耳濡目染之下相信自己的家庭不 好。對於白人家庭或其他有色族裔家庭來說，有責任感和堅定的養育方式都屬於值得效仿，而對於亞洲家庭來說，同樣的方式卻屬於可恥的和問題。 這 種假象的井噴在對蔡美兒（Amy Chua）2011年的“虎媽戰歌”一書所引起的全國範圍的回應中突顯出來。蔡氏提出的觀點其實並不新穎：孩子對自己的未來沒有足夠的責任心去做出決定， 好的父母必須堅定和自信，孩子則必須刻苦努力，即使犧牲樂趣。類似主題的書籍早已數以百計。之所以引起大爭議就是因為她的書作描寫的是亞裔孩子。對這本書 的積極回應者宣稱，非亞裔父母應該采用蔡氏的建議，而負麵評論則譴責說，蔡氏如此對待自己的孩子肯定會帶來的想象中的傷害。白人父母的直覺與技巧可以使他 們能策略性地實施蔡式家教。而對於亞裔父母，由於不具有美國式的情感與不善言辭，這麽做當然就屬於太過分了。 要 孩子注重家庭和勤奮刻苦並不是亞洲文化所獨有。 在所有種族，孩子的學業成就都與父母的合法身份，父母的社會經濟階層，以及家長受教育程度密切相關 （https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3442927/）。 無論什麽種族，父母較高的教育水平，穩定的社會經濟狀態，和（如果是移民）所具有合法身份全部都對應著孩子更高的成就。 因此，亞裔孩子較高的學業成就所反映的其實是美國移民政策偏差指導下篩選的結果，因為隻有程度較高的亞洲人才被允許移民美國。程度較高家庭的孩子比來自貧 困家庭的孩子在學業上表現更好，這是美國學校製度和美國人民所受待遇的黑色印記，並非本文所要討論的。但是，非要說亞裔兒童在學校表現較好是因為種族或文 化背景其實等於是在接受社會可以按種族劃分階層的理念。這是種族歧視的源頭。  確 實，亞裔美國孩子自殺意念和遭受抑鬱症的比率更高。 也許這與亞洲人群恥於討論精神疾病有關。然而，即使是針對其他有色人群社區最初級的研究也明確顯示，恥於討論自殺並非獨一無二的亞裔特征。 也許亞洲文化中存在著某種無法言表的內在品質。 然而，比較的結果表明，美國亞裔的大學自殺率與亞洲國家的比率相當，也許更高。 也就是說，在“亞洲文化”最為集中的亞洲國家，自殺並不明顯更高。因此，亞洲文化本身並不是某種會摧毀精神的特殊力量。 對 有關亞洲特征有害的反複宣傳阻礙著移民父母們對這個國家產生歸屬感，並加大了亞裔美國人放在快樂與“是亞洲人”之間的間隔距離。 一股腦把環境帶給我們的傷害歸咎於我們的父母時，不但解決不了孩子的問題，而且還加深了孩子與父母之間的代溝。 在整個人口層麵上，這樣的思路使“亞裔特色”變成一個問題，破壞了兩代人之間凝聚的任何可能性。 最終的結果是我們無法形成自我定位。 在一個認為我們毫無價值的國家裏，維護我們的種族自我就像在雷雨中試圖劃火柴。 把我們的父母和我們文化遺產看作造成我們不被尊重的原因，隻會讓事情變得更糟。 必 須拋棄把亞裔家庭和亞洲特色對亞裔美國人具有獨特傷害的觀念。 如果我們不去研究這個國家對我們的偏見，而放任我們與自己的父母發生衝突，那麽我們作為一個群體就將永遠無法愈合和興旺。研究結果表明，強烈的種族自尊， 與本族裔保持緊密聯係，以及加強對社會體製中的壓迫現象的理解會促進正麵的自尊，並可以減小其他有色族裔社區中的抑鬱症風險。 雖然對我們來說也是一樣，我們仍然必須為之努力。 如 果責備，我們的靶子應該放在所謂“模範少數族裔”，“永遠變不了的外國人”，以及“東方人預製形象”等等的標簽上麵。雖然貌似標榜，卻正是這些標簽形象構 成了對我們的壓迫。 盡管我們都非常熟悉這些比喻，但我們卻並沒有意識到它們其實在傷害著我們的福祉。 社會中普遍存在的對亞洲家庭失真的看法，各種精神健康資源得不到亞裔客戶的信任，根源皆源於此。 心 理治療師和校園顧問們將亞裔美國人的遭遇僅僅視為家庭壓力的結果，他們這樣看實際上是將亞裔家庭生活方式視為不自然，不人道。 他們對待亞裔心理問題從來不考慮種族問題帶來的壓力，因為他們仍然堅持認為亞洲人不可能受到種族歧視，那是一個早就過時的觀念。難怪去看心理治療師的亞裔 美國人回來隨診的幾率基本等於零。 在一定程度上，我們其實都明白，不斷批評自己的家庭既不能幫助我們了解自己，也不能為我們的問題提供切實可行的解決方案。 雖 然對能解決亞裔問題的專業人才的需求非常之大，但類似的專業培訓都缺乏針對性。 基於高壓鍋模型之上，有什麽樣的培訓能讓谘詢師在亞洲社區內找到問題的根源呢？我唯一一次到我們大學的精神衛生服務部門征求谘詢時，一位白人女士向我保 證，她見過許多具有“類似問題”的亞裔學生，並鼓勵我在與我父母的關係中“更加開放”。 谘詢之後我仍然糊塗，不知道我究竟應該怎麽做。 雖然我覺得美國大多數白人精神衛生人員不可能真正理解，並不具有能力來討論有關種族和精神疾病的相關問題，但是有培訓總比沒有好。心理服務人員隊伍裏的日 益增加的種族多樣化也使我對服務終將得到改善抱有希望。 我 不想再聽所謂亞裔“文化傳統”通過某種機製導致自殺的論調。我不想再打開下一封令人心碎的電郵，幾乎肯定犧牲者名字拚法會像我自己的一樣。我不想再去想象 又一位絕望的母親還要再承受一層“外國負罪感”的折磨。白人專家用自己的理論來解釋有關我們家庭模式的理論時那種自我感覺優越的腔調讓我憤怒;  我聽夠了年複一年各種新聞報道與分析文章，這些東西永遠對我們亞裔人得出一成不變的，令人厭倦的結論。我更願意相信我自己的孩子總有一天會為自己的亞裔身 份感到自豪，不會因為我在街上跟朋友講母語而恨不得躲起來。在一個人民受到愛護的國度裏，我們遭受的傷口，我們傷害自己父母的言辭根本不應該存在，但必須 由我們自己去修複之。 在 我們族裔中消除自我仇恨的運動已經開始認真推動。但是，在強迫我們拋棄對自己家庭的愛的美國目前環境裏，如果我們不能熱愛自己的家庭，我們就不可能做到愛 自己。我們從小就習慣性的被灌輸了反亞裔的觀點，斷然消除並不容易。但是，要想愈合，我們就必須消除之。我們的生存有賴於此。   英文原文  https://planamag.com/why-are-asian-american-kids-killing-themselves-477a3f6ea3f2