In this paper I will be sharing information I had gathered involving two students that were interviewed regarding education and their racial status of being an Asian-American. I will examine these subjects’ experiences as an Asian-American through the education they had experienced throughout their entire lives. I will also be relating and analyzing their experiences through the various concepts we had learned and discussed in class so far. Both of these individuals have experiences regarding their education that have similarities and differences. The first person I had interviewed was my current roommate, Eric Liu, 19. He is a sophomore majoring in Computer Science from Chino Hills, California and is of Taiwanese descent. Eric Liu was also …show more content…
Two forms of Segmented Assimilation can be used to explain these instances. The second form follows a pattern that is a downward-mobility of acculturation and integration with the new or hybrid customs of the new country, yet is being trapped in the bottom rungs of society. Similar to the way Bryan had grown up in poverty and nearly lost touch with his mother tongue. The third form being socioeconomic integration into mainstream America, where selective acculturation and deliberate preservation of ethnic community’s values, norms, and social ties. This falls in line with Eric’s family who immigrated already being relatively successful economically and education wise retaining their culture and language within their family. Both families did adopt certain nuances and values that can be described as “American” while still retaining their own culture. Both of these subjects also maintained the concepts of family and education as being of great importance. Education is also stressed in order to find a job that offers stability and security as well as enough money to live comfortably. This stems from their parents wanting their children to be auspicious and so that their immigration to the United States served a purpose. What stood out though, was that these subjects did not face much pressure to achieve exceptionally well in their education. Instead their …show more content…
Bryan labeled himself as a “Tiger-Son” pushing himself to succeed in every aspect throughout his life. What his parents did impart onto him though is the ability to exhibit resilience in overcoming any endeavor. Growing up, Bryan was deeply cognizant that he lived in very poor conditions. Having much disdain for it, so he saw education as an instrument to improve his and his family’s socioeconomic status. A story he had imparted to me was that when he was a child, his mother had bought him a toy laptop which had various random fun facts and also served as Bryan’s favorite toy growing up. He believes that this was the very reason why he became so engaged with learning and
Dr. Stanley Sue is an Asian American clinical psychologist whose research focus is on Asian American minorities. Dr. Sue was born in Portland, Oregon and was the third of six children to his Chinese immigrant parents. As a child “his first career ambition was to repair televisions, but soon he got bored with shop classes. Then, he developed great fascination with psychotherapy and the idea of helping emotionally disturbed individuals (Rockwell 2001).” Dr. Sue recalled, “I told my parents that I wanted to become a clinical psychologist, not fully knowing what a clinical psychologists did (Rockwell 2001).” He also remembered what his father said and thought after making this declaration: “My father, who was born in China, said, ‘What is that?’ He couldn’t believe that people would pay me to listen to their problems – indeed, he wondered if I could make a decent living (Rockwell 2001).”
Despite their being of the same culture, Asian American, the authors of the two texts have contrasting viewpoints. Elizabeth Wong, author of "The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl", looks upon Asian culture with eyes full of contempt and sees America culture as far superior. However, The author of "Notes for a Poem on Being Asian American", Dwight Okita, recognizes how the two cultures blend together, going hand-in-hand with one another. Wong's perception of her Asian culture as shameful is evident throughout the text. She wrote that her mother "forcibly" sent her and her brother to Chinese school (Wong 1).
In the story, “Growing Up Asian in America” by Kesaya E. Noda, she talks about different experiences she had encountered to become the woman she is today. She struggled with figuring out who she was, because she had three different cultures that needed to be one. For example, Noda had trouble learning and understanding her Japanese background, Noda gives us an example in lines (35-39) about how in the eyes of Americans she will always be considered a Japanese American and never American. Different Americans believe that Japanese did not and could not belong here. Through her writing, the audience understands that is not true. Being Japanese is just a part of her and that there is more than just that. This lesson was important because she accepted
Zia, Helen. Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
Upon first reading “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl”, it seemed to be about a young girl of Chinese descent struggling to make it through her new school, the Chinese school, and adapting to the life her mother envisioned for her. However, with further reading and understanding, the essay digs deeper into an American girl of Chinese ancestry, who is trying to find out who she is and how she is trying to move past her Chinese culture to adapt into the American way of life but other people will still recognize her as Chinese.
In Lee’s novel “The Making of Asian America a History”, she introduces the issues Asian Americans faced in America such as the label of minorities, racism, and their history in America. Lee suggests in most of her introduction that Asian Americans were discriminated. One of the reasons why Asian Americans were discriminated is because of heavy racism towards the minorities in America. Minorities in America are referred “to race and specifically nonwhite populations” (Schlund-Vials 161). From that, Lee discusses the experiences Asian Americans have as immigrants, refugees, and U.S citizens.
There was one African American kid, a handful of Asians, and maybe ten South Asians. Because I went to such an undiverse school, I found myself begin to become more American and westernized. Before I started school I would always have tradition desi lunches and mainly talk in my mother tongue, Urdu, at home. When I entered the public school system I found myself asking for hotdogs for dinner and starting to shift to mainly speaking English. One thing that had remained unchanged was my family’s traditional values. Everyone has heard the stereotype of Asians being extremely studious and hardworking, but they always forget that there is a reason behind that stereotype. My parents were always tell my siblings and I stories about how fortunate our lives were here compared to how they had it at their homelands. My parents had been privileged but it wasn’t as much as they had been in the US. We were told of distant cousins who lived in villages and how my mom’s family was the first to get a tv in their town. Those hardworking and studious values stuck with me through all of elementary. Even though I only learned division and simple vocabulary, I still studied long and hard to get As on those easy
I’m Asian, but more specifically I’m Laotian American. The more I learned in the class, the more I became self-cautious of the how people treat me. I only started to take a notice in the middle of the semester when encountering wrong doing toward me. I want to point fingers because I think they are being racist, but that might not be the case and I might be over thinking about it. Foundations of Cultural Competency made me ponder more into the possible issue marginalized groups could experience for not being white.
Asian Diaspora Asian diaspora, or the personal and cultural implications of leaving one's homeland, is a central and reaccuring theme for Asian American writers. Diaspora is Greek for "the scattering of seeds" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora), and its ancient denotation has taken figurative meaning today as a feeling of seperation and detachment. In both Fae Myenne Ng's Bone and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Leaving Yuba City, a thematic thread of "scattered parts", outsiderness, and otherness link the characters in each, as well as the two seperate works, together. This diaspora affects each generation of immigrants in a slighly different, but no less signficant, way. As an aspect of diasora, W.E.B. DuBois's notion of "double consciousness" in The Souls of Black Folk, takes the shape of a personal duality for the characters in Bone and Leaving Yuba City.
The environment where one was raised impacts in a variety of ways- some that aren’t thought about much until later in life. I grew up in Spearfish, South Dakota. It’s a stereotypical small town where virtually nothing seems to happen, which is why I’ve always dreamed of leaving this entire state behind someday. Once I graduated high school and left for college in another state, I realized that I didn’t want to leave simply because it was a small town. I wanted to leave because I’ve always had an underlying feeling of being different. Like many other regions in the midwest, my hometown was predominantly caucasian. I was blissfully ignorant at the time, so whenever my friends made a joke at my expense, I didn’t think of it as racist- I was taught that it was supposed to be funny. This derogatory humor aimed at these races were just another form of comedy; they're just words. After attending college in Denver and encountering so many people of different races and cultures, I realized how wrong it all was. Because of this, I became aware of how crucial
In this report, I will examine the roots of the import scene, and the effects that US-Japan relations has had on car cultures in the US and Japan. The importance of the cultural and trade relations that occurred due to the defeat of Japan, and the US occupation of Japan. These events played a vital role in the exchange of culture between the two countries. However Bosozoku and hot rods hold an equally important place.
The recurrent inquisition “Are you American?” or “Do you speak English”? define who can count as an American or not. The wholesale incarceration of many Japanese Americans during the World War II explains how the formulation of foreignness became reified. Regarding this issue, Chang and others highlight the unique positioning of Asian Americans in historical and current-days realities to analyze those oppressive forces which work to deny citizenship and immigration rights (Hing, 1993). And while the constant reminder of the outsider racialization also affect Latinos groups in a particular way, the specter of the yellow peril and the model minority continue to persist to marginalizing Asian American experiences in way that are unique to their historical and political context. Critical scholars in education working to disappear the model minority stereotype also find that the perception held by the public is more difficult to overcome within higher education circles, where the stereotype of Asian American excellence and overrepresentation seems to be at its highest because of its social, economic and cultural implications which are attached to educational attainment at its most elite
Moreover, there is not only physical crime, but also instances like whitewashing of Asian characters in Hollywood movies, turning the culture into a costume, or the pressure to assimilate ‘American’ names dissolves the Asian American narrative even more. Therefore, Asian Americans find themselves with “no foundation in politics, no cultural icon, no place in American history,” to the degree that “there is a sudden painful epiphany that we never belonged in the first place” (Yi, 2016). When an Asian immigrant comes to the U.S., they realize they must give up their culture and identity in order to acclimate, and there is meager advocacy for that custom to change. To be unaware of the historical and modern dilemmas of Asian Americans dismisses
Unless you are identical twins, no two people are alike, not even Asians. Ever since the beginning of immigration to our nation, we have far more noticed the similarities of ethnic groups of people more so than the differences. Typically, when we see people of Asian descent we think that they all look alike. The truth of the matter though is that there are many differences between the appearances of Asians depending on their country of origin.
I'm emailing you to talk about certain attitudes at PVCICS. It has come to my attention over the past few months that there have been some derogatory or mean things said at PVCICS over the past few months.