Pak, Maramba, and Hernandez argue that the aim of this monograph is to restructure campus policies related to racial diversity to consistently incorporate Asian Americans as a matter of equity. The historical and contemporary experiences of Asian Americans in higher education are interesting to consider from a diversity point of view. The way in which Asian Americans students have access to, or limitations in counseling, financial aid, and other social service need stem in large part from misunderstanding of the range of Asian American students’ experiences. How perceptions of these students have served to mold current practices and policies will be benefit for both practitioners and researcher in higher education. Much of the current understanding …show more content…
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
In the book “Academic Profiling” by Gilda L. Ocho, the author gives evidence that the “achievement gap” between Latinos and Asian American youth is due to faculty and staff of schools racially profiling students into educational tracks that both limit support and opportunities for Latinos and creates a divide between the two groups. Intersectionality, the ways in which oppressive in...
The Asian American history is the history of the ethnic and racial groups in the United States who are of Asian descent. Spickard (2007) shows that the "'Asian American' was an idea created in the 1960s to bring together the Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino Americans for a strategic and political purposes.
In the beginning when Asians came to America, they had started out with nothing, no foundation, and no help. All they could do was work hard to create a better life with their own hands, someday, in hope that they will succeed. Back in the 1800’s, during the gold rush days, Americans were displeased with the amount of Asian immigrants who came and took their jobs. Since then, Asians were able to survive and to achieve a great amount of success in the US. In order to catch up along with the rest of the world, the government created an example for their own people, known as the model minority. The model minority is a stereotype suggests that Asian Americans are “more academically, economically, and socially successful than any other racial minority groups.” (Yoo) In today’s world, Asian Americans are known to be “culturally — even genetically — endowed with the characteristics that enable them to succeed in American society.” (Wu) Model minority refers to a racial minority that serves a good example to be followed and compared for all other race; therefore, Asian Americans are characterized to it as one. If an Asian American is successful and smart, then it must be true about the whole Asian race. It creates false assumptions that every Asian is the same, which can discriminate and stereotype all Asian Americans who doesn’t belong in the category. This creates an unfair and unjust disadvantage and treatment towards Asian Americans who are targeted as one, in other words, it’s a problem that their needs and aids are ignored by society.
The United States of America is the place of opportunity and fortune. “Many immigrants hoped to achieve this in the United States and similar to other immigrants many people from the Asian Pacific region hoped to make their fortune. They planned to either return to their homelands or build a home in their new country (Spring, 2013).” For this reason, life became very complicated for these people. They faced many challenges in this new country, such as: classifying them in terms of race and ethnicity, denying them the right to become naturalized citizens, and rejecting them the right of equal educational opportunities within the school systems. “This combination of racism and economic exploitation resulted in the educational policies to deny Asians schooling or provide them with segregated schooling (Spring, 2013).”This was not the country of opportunity and fortune as many believed. It was the country of struggle and hardship. Similarly, like many other immigrants, Asian Americans had the determination to overcome these obstacles that they faced to prove that the United States was indeed their home too.
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.
For 20 years, Asian Americans have been portrayed by the press and the media as a successful minority. Asian Americans are believed to benefit from astounding achievements in education, rising occupational statuses, increasing income, and are problem-fee in mental health and crime. The idea of Asian Americans as a model minority has become the central theme in media portrayal of Asian Americans since the middle 1960s. The term model minority is given to a minority group that exhibits middle class characteristics, and attains some measure of success on its own without special programs or welfare. Asian Americans are seen as a model minority because even though they have faced prejudice and discrimination by other racial groups, they have succeeded socially, economically, and educationally without resorting to political or violent disagreements with the majority race. The “success” of the minority is offered as proof that the American dream of equal opportunity is capable to those who conform and who are willing to work hard. Therefore, the term ...
The intersection of dominant ideologies of race, class, and gender are important in shaping my social location and experiences. By exercising my sociological imagination (Mills, 1959), I will argue how my social location as an Asian American woman with a working class background has worked separately and together to influence how I behave, how others treat and view me, and how I understand the world. The sociological imagination has allowed me to understand my own “biography”, or life experiences by understanding the “history”, or larger social structures in which I grew up in (Mills, 1959). First, I will describe my family’s demographic characteristics in relation to California and the United States to put my analysis into context. I will then talk about how my perceptions of life opportunities have been shaped by the Asian-American model minority myth. Then, I will argue how my working class location has impacted my interactions in institutional settings and my middle/upper class peers. Third, I will discuss how gender inequalities in the workplace and the ideological intersection of my race and gender as an Asian-American woman have shaped my experiences with men. I will use Takaki’s (1999) concepts of model minority myth and American identity, Race; The Power of an Illusion (2003), Espiritu’s (2001) ideological racism, People Like Us: Social Class in America (1999) and Langston’s (2001) definition of class to support my argument.
The discrimination against Caucasian and Asian American students a long with the toleration of lower quality work produced by African American students and other minority students is an example of the problems caused by Affirmative Action. Although affirmative action intends to do good, lowering the standards by which certain racial groups are admitted to college is not the way to solve the problem of diversity in America's universities. The condition of America's public schools is directly responsible for the poor academic achievement of minority children. Instead of addressing educational discrepancies caused by poverty and discrimination, we are merely covering them up and pretending they do not exist, and allowing ourselves to avoid what it takes to make a d... ... middle of paper ... ...
When diversity is being discussed, there are a plethora of ideas that are associated with it. Whether people are talking being put on a waitlist for college, about people of color, or about representation in the media, the subject of diversity is not rare. Recently, the conversation of diversity has become more common because colleges want to demonstrate that they have diversified campus. How would diversity on campus be defined? Most importantly, diversity is more than having an extraordinary personality. Race, gender, sexuality, and social status are a few of the superfluous traits that make an individual unique in a college’s eyes. In Sophia Kerby’s article, “10 Reasons Why We Need Diversity on College Campuses”, she notes that, while there has already been an effort to diversify high schools and middle schools, accepting students of different backgrounds is not as apparent in higher education (1) . A university desires to diversify its campus in order to benefit the students that are attending the college. Students are not only likely to improve
The air would always be humid and stuffy while riding the bus to school, and the slightest bump in the road would result in tossing up the kids like salad. The backseat would provide carriage for all the popular and tough kids shouting out at pedestrians on the street or flipping off a middle finger to the bus driver that would shout for them to calm down. I despised those kids in the back. They were the same people that made my life a living hell, while growing up and attending an American school.
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.
Annotated Bibliography Journals: The Journal of the American Denson, N., & Chang, M. (2009). Racial Diversity Matters: The Impact of Diversity-Related Student Engagement and Institutional Context. American Educational Research Journal, 46, 322-353. This article discusses the different forms of racial diversity contribution to students’ educational and learning experiences and the positive effects on students who adopt these diversity opportunities. The author demonstrates how the quality of higher education is substantially heightened by diversity-connected efforts.
For those Asian Americans who make known their discontent with the injustice and discrimination that they feel, in the white culture, this translates to attacking American superiority and initiating insecurities. For Mura, a writer who dared to question why an Asian American was not allowed to audition for an Asian American role, his punishment was “the ostracism and demonization that ensued. In essence, he was shunned” (Hongo 4) by the white people who could not believe that he would attack their superior American ways. According to writers such as Frank Chin and the rest of the “Aiiieeeee!” group, the Americans have dictated Asian culture and created a perception as “nice and quiet” (Chin 1972, 18), “mama’s boys and crybabies” without “a man in all [the] males.” (Chin 1972, 24). This has become the belief of the proceeding generations of Asian Americans and therefore manifested these stereotypes.
A perpetual foreigner, in the context of American society, is a group of people who will always be assumed as non-American before they’re assumed American (Huynh). Even those who are American citizens, maybe even third or fourth generation Americans, will be seen as foreigners in their own country. The perpetual foreigner concept stems from the fact that people are more likely to associate being “American” with being a European American rather than an ethnic minority (Huynh). Although subtle and often unnoticed, the notion that Asian Americans will never be as “American” as white Americans is racist in that it actively excludes Asian Americans as well as implying a certain inferiority of Asian Americans as compared to white Americans (Huynh). Perpetual foreigner isn’t only assigned to Asian Americans, and is also often assigned to Latin Americans
Garcia, E. (2002). Student cultural diversity: Understanding and meeting the challenge (3rd Ed.). New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.