Asian-Americans in medicine broke a traditional silence on issues specific to the Asian community last Saturday and discussed discrimination, stereotypes and lack of awareness on Asian diversity.

An audience of nearly 100 undergrads and graduates from most of the Harvard graduate schools gathered to hear five Asian-Americans in the field of medicine and an expert in race relations at a conference at the Medical School.

Although the panel found no discrimination against Asians in academic medicine, they discussed a tendency to stereotype Asians and categorize the diverse group under one bracket in public policy.

All agreed with the Asian Health Association's motive for organizing the forum--that there is a "lack of public discourse on issues specific to the Asian community."

Students said they found the forum helpful and inspiring.

"It gave me a chance to understand other people's approaches that I might not hear from friends," said Cynthia S. Wu '98.

Diversity Ignored

James Ho, a member of the Asian Health Association, thought that one of the most important issues raised at the conference was the grouping of extremely diverse groups under the same heading of Asians in public policy.

Such generalizations, said Ho, skew research funding so that although "Chinese women get cervical cancer more than Caucasians," they are ignored because all Asian women do not share this problem.

Panelist Dong Suh, a member of the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum gave an example of the diversity of Asians in America. "Asians have the highest percentage of college degrees of any minority and the highest percentage of people with [only] five years of education," he said.

Generalization of Asians in public policy "more out of convenience than anything else," Suh said, "obfuscates the real picture."

Discrimination?

The speakers generally agreed that they had not faced much discrimination in health care.

Members of the audience feared, however, that their successes might blind them to the existence of discrimination against other Asian-Americans.

Although all panelists saw the under-representation of Asians in leadership roles as an issue, they did not find this the result of discrimination.