Discrimination Against Asian Americans

The Evolution of Asian American Culture The United States is not a “melting pot” of cultures but is more complex like a “salad bowl” where foreign and domestic influences combine to create a society where individual differences in gender, race religion, or ethnic background are valued. Immigrants strived to become the ideal “American” citizen, a more historically accurate metaphor is that the U.S. has had a cultural “cookie cutter” with a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, male mold; but the view of culture has changed. Today, with the increase of numerous subcultures, diversity is greater valued and accepted. The growing acknowledgment of Asian American subculture present is in social media as a result of the continuously growing Asian American population.

As a result of the segregation from other races, Asian Americans have typically kept to themselves and are focused on becoming successful. In addition to the political absence of Asians extending beyond other races, the persistent model minority myth is an accepted truth within the community itself. While the stereotupe is a complete myth, it has been so embedded that even Asian Americans start to believe it, making them and other believe that Asians are the only minority that have endowed the key to success in America. Asians are not only placed in the shadows, but they also choose to stay; many are too comfortable with their successful personal lives, to the extent of neglecting the matters of other Asians ethnicities. Additionally, Asians are perceived to be traditionally passive, giving an almost filial piety towards white people in hopes of having the same privileges.

Examining the Major Barriers of Diversity Among Asian-Americans B. Thesis Statement The Asian-American journey is a combination of determination, struggles, and assimilation. Racial discrimination is a product of three major barriers which include cultural aspiration to assimilate, representation in media, and model minority stereotype. It is important to recognize these barriers and understand the way that they are being experienced by Asian-Americans. C. Outline I. Introduction II.

When Chinese Honor Society applications were open, I heard countless people saying “Oh I won’t get in because I’m Asian”. When looking at colleges, people say “Yeah, but I’m Asian”. Why is this? The answer is simple. Colleges need to vary the diversity in their acceptances, which subsequently results in affirmative action for Hispanics and African Americans, denying Asian Americans of any privilege due to the untrue stereotype of them being the ‘model minority’.

Takaki's essay on 'The Harmful Myth of Asian Superiority' is littered with statistics. He uses these stats to persuade the reader that Asians are not yet and still far away from being in par with Caucasians. He explains that Asians are perceived to have a higher income than Caucasians, but considering the majority of the Asian population in the US is concentrated in large, urbanized and expensive cities such as New York and California, they are barely making enough to get by in these cities. He goes on to explain various of other reasons why Asians are not "superior" than other races like how Asians make more money because they have more people in the family who are working and how the only reason Japanese Americans make a bit more than the

Asians have been called the model minority and have been accepted more than any other minority group for several years. The term was first used in print by William Peterson in 1966 in his New York Times Magazine article about the success of Japanese-Americans (Chin, 2001). Peterson said the values and work ethic of the Japanese made them accepted more and not considered a problem minority (Chin, 2001). Another in U.S. News and World report described Chinese-Americans the same way later in 1966 (Chin, 2001). Some even say that Asian-Americans are no longer thought of as a marginal minority (McNamara & Burns, 2009).

In the article, Racial Violence against Asian American, the racial violence toward Asian Americans are usually targeted. This means Asian Americans are targeted because of the social economic, and the racist violence toward Asian American. The essay discussed that the racial violence against Asian Americans were infeasible and that the paradigmatic of racial violence will elucidate of the incident. In the essay, it used the death of Vincent Chin in Detroit, Michigan during 1982 as an example. The essay talks about how this attack stands out as a perverse symbol of racist violence.

IS Civil Rights Speech “It’s not fair” … the final words of an innocent U.S. citizen that was judged solely from appearances. This man was Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American who was “severely beaten in the Detroit suburb of Highland Park, Michigan during June, 1982”.5 Subsequently, he died four days later, the date of which he was originally supposed to be married. That once planned-to-be day became his last as he laid on his deathbed due to two men, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, who committed this homicide due to “U.S. auto manufacturing jobs being lost to Japan”.5 The two mistakenly identified Chin as Japanese, and begun to throw racial slurs such as “jap”, “chink”, and “nip”, but they did not stop there.

Many debate over the whether structure or agency has a larger part in shaping human behavior. Structure is the repeating patterned features of society which affect the choices and opportunities available for a person. On the other hand, agency is the limit of how people act alone and make their own unrestrained choices in life. In the debate of structure vs. agency, whether a person acts independently or in a conduct dictated by social structure is discussed. Throughout my aunt, Margaret Gee’s, childhood as a Vietnamese-American immigrant, she had to deal with the patriarchal ideals that are commonly found in Asian family structures.

A certain percentage of people have always asked, “Why are Asians treated poorly in the media if they are the model minority?” For the longest time, Asian Americans have been unable to achieve a voice or leave a trace in American pop culture since the popular media and consumer market undermines and negatively systematizes the racial group. As a matter of fact, there are plentiful Hollywood films nowadays that lack racial diversity in its casting members. Consequently, if the movie or television show did consist a diverse set of performers that consist of minorities, there is an abundance of racial mockery within the portrayal of the characters. Asian Americans are great examples of being undermined as they one of the few races in this country