Living in the white world of America was difficult during the time of war; the Asians were tormented by the way they had to present themselves. In history, some people were afraid to stand up for what they thought was right. There were also some courageous people who stood against discrimination and forced it into the public's eye. For instance, Rosa Parks was a dark colored woman who stood against the bus rules by refusing to give up her seat to a white man. By doing this act of bravery she was arrested for not abiding by the “white” laws. On the other hand, some groups like the KKK were in agreement that racial profiling was okay because the “white” image was “supreme” back then. In her novel, When the Emperor was Divine, Otsuka uses racial …show more content…
After returning from the internment camp, the boy and the girl tried to return to “normal” life again. School for them was an escape from judgment, even though they still had some problems that most normal people deal with occasionally, they still had hope that they would be treated equally when they returned to school. While walking to school the children couldn’t come to realization that looks were still being drawn to them by how they “ignored the passing glances of strangers”(Otsuka 120). Also the types of questions they were asked by strangers, “What kind of “ese” are you, Japanese or Chinese?”(Otsuka 120). What comes to mind is an image of how society glances upon a person with a different look. In today’s society judgment is still happening. People will do something different than other people and they will just give them a glare. Groups like the KKK, thought that treating people poorly with a different skin color was okay and their actions were a sign of power, ruining the lives of those with a different skin. Being a different skin is not a sin, it's a gift that God has given us, so that we can diversify around the world and get past all of the colorful chaos that people with power created in order to strike the fear in the eyes of people who are
the prejudice, hate and violence that seem to be so deeply entrenched in America's multiracial culture and history of imperialism, Takaki does offer us hope. Just as literature has the power to construct racial systems, so it also has the power to refute and transcend them… The pen is in our hands.
John Dower's War Without Mercy describes the ugly racial dimensions of the conflict in the Asian theater of World War II and their consequences on both military and reconstruction policy in the Pacific. "In the United States and Britain," Dower reminds us, "the Japanese were more hated than the Germans before as well as after Pearl Harbor. On this, there was no dispute among contemporary observers. They were perceived as a race apart, even a species apart -- and an overpoweringly monolithic one at that. There was no Japanese counterpart to the 'good German' in the popular consciousness of the Western Allies." (8) Conservative readers, don't fret - Dower isn't making this argument to exonerate the Japanese for their own racism or war crimes -- after all, "atrocious behavior occurred on all sides in the Pacific War." (12-13) Rather, Dower is exploring the propaganda of the US-Japanese conflict to delineate the "patterns of a race war," the cultural mechanisms of "othering," and the portability of racial/racist stereotypes. For "as the war years themselves changed over into into an era of peace between Japan and the Allied powers, the shrill racial rhetoric of the early 1940s revealed itself to be surprisingly adaptable. Idioms that formerly had denoted the unbridgeable gap between oneself and the enemy proved capable of serving the goals of accommodation as well." (13)
...silenced in this country, in order to have voice and be visible in society, one must strive to be a white American. They feel the need to embody and assimilate to whiteness because the white race has a voice and is seen, rather than silenced and unseen, in society. They are privileged with the freedom of not having to cope with the notion of being marked, silent, and unseen in society. This creates pressures for Asian Americans and immigrants to suppress their own cultural identities and assimilate to whiteness in an attempt to potentially be able to prosper and make a life for them in America. Asian Americans feel as though being who they truly are and express their unique cultural identities will alienate themselves even more than they already are.
The tone right away reduces the Japanese student to a coconut-headed Jap, sly and cunning, and must have cheated his way through life, although the boy is obviously intelligent, being head of the class. Stratton-Porter bars no discriminatory remarks by portraying the American girl, "Sweet Linda" spouting against the Japanese boy who heads the class: "Before I would let a Jap, either a boy or girl, lead in my class, I would give up going to school and go out and see if I could beat him growing lettuce and spinach." (Doc 6) It goes on to protest the foreigners' success, fearing that it would bring in "greater numbers, better equipped for battle of life than we are." (Doc 6) Another public source that also feared a sort of a revolution was the anonymous "Because You're a Jew," generalizing the Jew as a cheat and a swindler, always winning contests, sly speaking and greedy. "The Jew is winning everywhere. By fair means or by foul means he wins.
Somehow, everything about the whites appear to elicit a reigning beauty that raises hatred and envy the black girls have against the white girls. Packer argues that even small thing like hair contributes to hostility. The fourth grade says; “their long, shampoo-commercial hair, straight as spaghetti from the box” (Packer, 16). These reinforcements are ingredients of prejudice that brings about racial discrimination. The black girls get jealous of the white girls’ hair, and this leads to discrimination against them. It is worth noting that the prejudices are handed down by the environment and society that people are brought up in. Arnetta, remembers a mall experience when she and her mother were being seen as if they were from China. They were being discriminated because of their race. The various treatments given to black people has played a vital role in intensifying the issue of prejudice, magnifying people’s sense of inferiority, and shaping the views of the black people on the white people. Arnetta says; “Even though I didn’t fight to fight, was afraid of fight, I felt I was part of the rest of the troop; like I was defending something” (Packer, 12). This is a clear indication that society has the power to influence youths. It depicts how society joins hands to fight for what they think is their right. Owed to the fact that this is a society. Everything and everyone is interlinked in a given way, making racism and prejudice hard to do away
When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka is a novel about the hardships that the Japanese-Americans faced during a time in which they were forced to live in internment camps. There is a scene which depicts a middle-aged woman who ties her dog to a tree, then proceeds to lay her pet in a hole that she previously digs into the ground, telling it to play dead. The woman then picks up a shovel wearing white gloves and strikes the dog in the head. She buries it in her backyard before her kids come home from their last day of school. The white gloves show an absence of evil in her intent. White is a gentle color: it is the color of our walls, the sky, and the snow that falls from the clouds on Christmas. It is important for the author to show that the woman is not malevolent because it establishes her character as a person with goodwill.
In When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka, each of the characters – the mother, the daughter, the son, and the father - change because of their time spent in the Japanese-American internment camps. These characters change in not only physical ways, but they also undergo psychic and emotional changes as a result of staying in the camps. These changes weaken their resolve for living and cause the quality of their lives to decline; some of these changes will affect their lives forever. Their reclassification into the internment camps stays with the family long after they are released from the camps.
It was Emerson who said it best, “For nonconformity, the world whips you with its displeasure” (Porter 1155). With a detailed look of Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds” and John Updike’s “A&P,” you will find that this quote is entirely applicable in the context of oppressiveness and in the likeness of “coming of age.” These two stories document the different perspectives of two characters’ growing up and how the role of the invisible hand of oppression guides developing adolescents into mature adults; without prejudice or even forethought. The characters in question are: Sammy, an A&P store clerk whose time spent at work reveals how oppressed by society he is, and Jing-Mei, whose life and every move is dictated by the iron fist of her high-expectations Asian mother. In comparing these stories, you will find how two characters, with very different lives, are essentially affected by the same forces of humanity.
There were many events that happened in the past which people were fighting for their rights and freedoms. In the novel “When The Emperor Was Divine” by Julie Otsuka, she uses this novel to tell the readers about the importance of freedom and human right. In the story, she did not mention the name of the main characters, but the characters that involve in this novel is a Japanese family who get arrest by the American because of their ethnicities. First, their father got arrested by the American because the American doubted that this man was a spy from Japan. Then their whole family got arrested into the Japanese Concentration Camp in the desert. They were ordered not to go through the fence of the camp or else they will get kill by the soldiers who guarding the camp. This means that their freedoms were taken away by the camp. In the story, the girl’s personality was changed because of this camp. She starts to realize that this “camp” was nothing but a jail. So she started to give on her life and not to care about anything. She used to eat with her family, but now she never did; also she started to smoke cigarette in her ages of 14 to15. Also their human rights were being taken while their were in the camp. They were being force to admit to America for their loyalty. It makes all the Japanese people to feel low self-esteem for their identity. Therefore, the author uses this novel to show the changing of this family by the lack of freedom and human right.
In chapter one of *The Emperor's New Mind,* professor Roger Penrose introduces the idea of *strong Artificial Intelligence.* He writes:
Hwang’s father has been victims of racism since 1996, we can’t tell by the last name or by the way the look like where they come from. We aren’t allowed to ask at auditions legally, a person’s race. Therefore, the fact that DHH a character in this play mistakes a white man for being part Asian shows us that we can’t necessarily tell where a you really from by looking
During the 60’s and 70’s, people have thrashed out with their words and each other. This caused some awareness in schools due to the offensiveness of the matter. During the 80’s schools began on focusing on preventing this kind of speech on their campuses. Since then, students have become more and more sensitive in a negative way. The authors used an example of a kid shouting “Shut up, you water buffalo” at an Israeli born student. That incident made national news, just for calling another kid a “water buffalo.” Another example is when a university found a student guilty of racial harassment for reading a book honoring student opposition to the Ku Klux Clan. The picture on the cover of the book offended one of the student’s co-workers. Just because the student was reading a book, minding his own business, the student was punished from the university. Never said anything or hurt anyone physically, and his education was ruined by someone taking offense to a book he was reading. The authors used this extreme example to prove that accepting the fact that student are fragile and letting them be fragile is not the right way to go and the past can prove
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.
In her letter, Woo references the time she saw her father humiliated by two white cops. At the time of writing the letter she feels anger towards the racist police officers, but at the time of the event she was a victim of learned behavior and also becomes a part of her father’s abuse. Learning to be ashamed of your father when he is not able to fit the “masculine” schema you have made for him is a socially taught and reinforced belief, which in this case manifests as a behavior when Woo says “I was so ashamed after that experience when I was only six years old that I never held his hand again” (Woo, 164). In this flashback to her childhood Woo and her father are not the only ones expressing learned behaviors. The two white cops who mock the Asian immigrant do so because in some way, whether from prompting by society, teachings from their upbringing, or any other way, these officers were taught to be racist. Her father’s learned helplessness is what gave him a chance to survive in America, the cop’s learned racism helped them get ahead in a society that values “whiteness”. Just like with racism the ignorance of sexism is also taught and is not coded into our genes. Woo is disheartened that some of her Asian brother’s do not support her fight for the Third World women and against sexism. She points out that they are trading vices when “these men of color, with clear vision, fight the racism in white society, but have bought the white male definition of ‘masculinity’” (Woo,
Emperor Akbar the Great was one of the six emperors to rule the mighty Mughal Empire in India. In English the word “Akbar” itself means “great,” so his name literally means “great the great.” During his rule as emperor of the Mughal Empire, Akbar made many huge impacts on the empire which would last for the end of his reign and even hundreds of years to come. Akbar is best known for his skills on the battlefield, huge military conquests, administrative genius, and his religious and social tolerance (Mohiuddin).