In American society, the Chinese faced racism through stereotypes as well as over sexualizing the women of Chinese descent. Through these “reasons” the Chinese were excluded from participation in American life and were seen as second class citizens which were inferior to the white Americans. The women were forced into sexual acts which created a stereotype of being lustful, dirty, unclean etc. They were also forced into detainment camps or used for manual labor in horrible conditions without much pay. However, the exclusion from American society and way of life were not only limited to the women but many Chinese children were also not given many opportunities to attend school. For those who were able to attend they faced a lot of discrimination within an educational space that’s supposed to help students not hurt them. Naturally the Chinese were outraged by the disrespect to their culture and wanted change. They tried peaceful protest by sadly it didn’t change the laws discriminating against them. Now many Asians face harassment and are blamed for the current pandemic going on just because it originated from China. The American president publicly made bad jokes and snarky remarks on this pandemic encouraging people to join in on the blame against the Chinese. It’s another way of discrimination and a way for Americans to exclude them from the society through hate crimes, either verbally or physically. It’s interesting to learn about because not many school teach about Asian American history or the experiences that Asians went through in America. It opens up many thoughts and discussions because it shows the true nature of American history and how many groups were discriminated against and had to fight hard for the positions and rights in today society. It’s also important to learn this because history has a way of repeating itself if we’re not careful. Through this class I was able to see connections between the modern world and how we treat each other in society and compare or contrast between how they were treated in the past. But it’s not only Asians but multiple cultures had to go through similar things as well and in today’s society Americans find new things to further separate cultures.
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That’s right. If we don’t learn and continue to improve this discrimination, the history of Asian-Americans not being treated fairly will continue.
I agree that studying these things are so important. It brings to light the dark history of America’s founding and expansion, that has been ignored and suppressed perhaps in an effort to minimize anguish. But not addressing these issues just makes it worse, because as you mentioned history has a tragic way of repeating itself.
hey Anaise
True, not many school teach about Asian-American. it is important to learned about our history and it interesting to learn more about new things you never know about; the dark and good, I’m learning new things everyday as I go to class. And yes, people might not realize this but history does has a way of repeating itself if we do not try to learn.