Author: Alexis Gayle

Phi brings up an issue in the Asian American community. He touches on the way Asians in law enforcement feel the need to fit in and play along with other police officers, mainly white, to fit into that image. He said it in a way as though the only option they have is to protect themselves if no one else. When Phi mentions the police violence against the black communities, a connection is made and Asian officers tend to fight for themselves by siding with their own. In this case, their own is the corrupt law enforcement. The goal of this piece is to shine a light on what it means and must feel like to be an Asian American in law enforcement that continuously uses loyalty as a stand to keep control. They should not have to “enforce their laws on black and brown bodies” as Phi said in the article. I believe Phi aims to encourage them to stand up for themselves differently without letting race cloud their actions, the way they should think, and judgements in life. I learned that Chinese conservatism has to do with Chinese values such as the need for a good education to get out of poverty and other beliefs they need rather than want. Both Phi and Zen are motivated to stand up and act on what racism is pushing communities to do. Zen and Phi are very critical of their own in ways that make us as the readers want to understand the wrong being done and the right that can be done to fix the issues. 

 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/118WHmz6Tx7wlBKPioAhK8QcNffnwr20SWhdzat88Fgs/edit?usp=sharing

 

Frameworks- Sakhi’s, “Gender Based Violence During the Covid-19 Crisis” is an excerpt that I took interest in because the title struck me. I never knew situations could get so out of hand even with the pandemic going on. As I was reading this excerpt, I learned that the pandemic has a heavier impact on people that have no outside support. Sakhi advises people to check on their loved ones despite the severity of the pandemic. Undocumented immigrants have a higher chance of staying inside with these perpetrators and stay victims of domestic violence because if they need to go to the hospital, they refrain from doing so because they risk their document status being exposed. This makes them live in more fear than they already are in when living with perpetrators of violence. Cases of domestic violence went up drastically in China in February all because of the pandemic. In this, Sakhi gives tips to these immigrants if they end up in a violent situation.

Stories- Alice Tsui’s, “Tired of Being Asian” is an excerpt that exposes some examples and first hand experiences of Asians as they are discriminated against. Most of these discriminatory statements towards these Asians tied back to the idea that the pandemic is all the fault of China and it is a “Chinese virus”. I took interest in this excerpt because the title pretty much gave me an idea that it would be a juxtaposition. The content would not be about not liking being Asian, but it would rather be about other people wanting Asians to feel bad for coming where they come from. I thought the title choice was impactful. Going deeper into this excerpt, Alice, an educator and musician, discussed her own experience with the attacks. The school that she worked at treated her differently relating to the corona virus and looked into her “Chinese-ness”, which is discrimination at a worse level because now it is affecting people at their workplace. She went on to say it is hard and unfortunate that she has to over explain her Asian-ness as if it is a burden or something you should not be.

Resources- Malaka Ghairib and Wanyu Zhang’s excerpt called “Wash Your Hands” struck me at first because it is something that we are told everyday on social media, news, and the CDC, so I was looking forward to the tips in this action and something new that I might not know. As I read through the excerpt it was so cool because the comics and drawings really jumped out and although they were not very realistic, the message did come across strong. This message was “It’s very important to remember that this kind of virus can affect ANYBODY. It doesn’t matter where you come from or where your parents are from” (Ghairib, 35). People would not make this statement if we were all treated respectfully and equally without blame put on one race for a virus outbreak.

 

In “The Forgotten Asian Refugees”, I found that most refugees that have to resettle are not supported by anything. As a result they struggled to move forward successfully with their lives. For instance, some turn to the streets, gangs, and imprisonment of Southeast Asians skyrocketed as a result. Another condition of the refugee resettlement was the high high school and college drop out rates. There were  more reports of bullying, poverty, and difficulty learning the U.S. language and culture. The economic part was troubling for those families because they were financially unstable, which caused families/parents to separate.

Some immigrants that are moved as refugees end up detained by I.C.E. The problem is when these people left their countries it was for the purpose of escaping violence and war breakouts. If they are detained or deported their life is back in harm’s way. Those that are criminalized face evictions from American society because all of their crimes are tied back to the years starting after their resettlement.

Deportation has shown families and deportees suffered from PTSD, trauma, and fear because they don’t know what they’ll be going back into. Some suffer so bad, they turn to crime, alcohol, drugs, and gain suicidal tendencies. Deportation is less healthy for communities, not safer. It breaks up families that do not even ask to be so heartbroken.

It is just really sad to see how bad things are getting with immigration policies that people have to hide out in fear regardless they are in their home country around violence or in the U.S. hiding from I.C.E.

 

In Kim’s “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans”, it is stated that “The valorization of Asian Americans as a model minority who have made it on their own cultural steam only to be victimized by the reverse discrimination of race conscious programs allow White opinion makers to lambast such programs without feeling racist…” (Kim, 117). In 1850, racial triangulation gave Whites the power to exploit and set their dominance as the race to be. From this, the model minority myth construed Asian to be successful in education and basic life qualities whereas Black people are guaranteed to struggle with their own deficiencies. The problem with the myth is it centers too much on Asians material success forcing pressure on them to be at the top. The myth does not assimilate Asians to Whites. Model minority was first uttered in a magazine later determining culture is a matter of blood or biological race. The rebirth of the model minority myth came again at a political time during a conservative campaign of civil rights and affirmative action. This myth is reproduced in affirmative action because it yet again serves to protect Whites from backlash from the “bad minority” and the minority with no cultural values to success.

 

In the reading, “Ozawa and Thind”, Lopez states “The Court’s eventual embrace of common knowledge confirms the falsity of natural notions of race, exposing race instead as a social product of measurable only in terms of what people believe” (Lopez, 80). Now this statement reiterates so much about the topic of race as a social construct. Race being only what people believed in was dangerous because at the time racists would use what they believed in to indoctrinate the superiority of white race over all other races. For that reason being, there was a specific criteria for citizenship. In Ozawa’s immigration aftermath, he viewed himself as an American by heart, not by name. To prove he was an American, he could not have any ties to his home country of Japan like their language, choice of marital partner, and Japanese organizations including schools, churches, etc. This goes all the way down to his kids as well. After submitting that application, Osawa was denied citizenship because he was of Japanese race/descent. This caused him to go to the highest court and fight to get his citizenship. The problem was he asserted he should not have been denied it because he is white skinned. Eventually the Court said he was not white. This shows me that the criteria for citizenship was to be white because in previous cases, each defendant tried to prove to the Court that they were white. Now they would not do this for any reason. At the time, whites were seen as the race that were accepted as Americans. I think citizenship today can be defined as the ability to conform and become accustomed to the standards of America and their views on being tied to a foreign country. I think every race can be a part of the U.S. if the U.S. was not so blinded by the past and the social constructs on race and the need to be white to be acknowledged as an American. To belong here, it means we are acknowledged and in ways where our every life decision is not compromised and judged based on the color of our skin or what people deem our race to be. In my own opinion, that should be the new definition of citizenship. Any person of any race that can come to America and respect America while embracing their home country without limits and consequences. 

 

The Mexican border wall was to exclude Chinese people. There were guards trained and experienced to tell who was Chinese and trying to come through the border of Mexico. Mexico was a better place than any other borders for Chinese migrants to try and cross because Canada worked with the U.S. to stop migration in general, so Mexico was a better illegal gateway into the U.S. There were many ways to compromise. In the article, “The first Mexican border wall was actually to keep out Chinese people”, Harmon Leon states that “Chinese were mostly thought of as a cheap but unwelcome source of labor who weren’t entitled to become U.S. citizens, and so vastly and culturally different that they were incapable of assimilating into American society” (Leon).

In “How early SF kept Chinese children out of the schoolhouse”, Kamiya states that “In 1860, Moulder’s beliefs became law, when the Legislature decreed that Negroes, Mongolians, and Indians shall not be allowed into public schools  and authorized local officials to penalize any school that allowed “inferior races” to mix with whites. There was no requirement that public schools be provided for the Chinese or any other nonwhite children” (Kamiya 3). This was completely absurd because it was a racist superintendent, which defintley shaped the discrimination into existence. Chinese communities decided to protest and petition. Also, the “Chinese community argued that it was grossly unfair that they had to pay taxes and were denied the right to send their children to public schools” (Kamiya 3). 

I feel as though in current events, it is easy to categorize Chinese immigrants. In this way, it gives people a reason to discriminate because of race which is not a justification for racism. It is disheartening what the women had to go through to be considered as  well enough to get into the U.S. 

 

In this class, I think there are a lot of things going well. The reminders are very convenient for time management especially for this semester since I am taking 12 credits and my classes are back to back throughout the week. In terms of my assignment due dates, I have been a little stressed finding actual space in between my work schedule and my time free at home to do assignments. I end up doing the assignments and discussion boards on the same day it was assigned to get it out of the way. I have not really been in contact with any of my peers in this class, but eventually I would. The discussion board commenting on each other is really cool because it gives me a small insight on my classmates opinions and personalities in a way. 

I am comfortable with it. I don’t think I would like to change anything at the moment. 

One song that I would like to add to the class playlist is Ariana Grande’s “no tears left to cry”. This song is so upbeat and out of the hundreds of times I listened to it, I always feel empowered. The chorus part after no tears left to cry is basically a statement to anyone saying do not feel sorry for being who you are and never let anyone put you down. The best part is I looked into Ariana’s explanation of some of her lyrics in the song and she deeply defends her points on women empowerment and strength that society fails to shine a light on. 

 

          In the reading, race is a way of distinguishing people or assigning a person to a group of people that are also their skin color. Ethnicity in its own is defined as a self proclaimed sense of categorizing yourself  into a group based on your common presumed ancestry, history, or way of life. Culture is where a person acquires knowledge and how they grow to live life. By saying that race or gender are socially constructed, Dhingra and Rodriguez are saying that there is nothing written in stone that can automatically tell someone’s race or gender. Socially constructed is like saying society based opinions are written and have to be true if seen or by the way society describes a person’s race or gender by how they look physically. “Yellow peril” was a stereotype that depicted all Asians and Asian Americans as the opposite of a westerner, which was defiant, causing economic, political, and sexual threats to the West. In contrast, “Model minority” is the stereotype that places Asians Americans into this automatic high status, privilege, and expectation of success that surpasses white people.

          Moreover, race, ethnicity, and culture work hand in hand with each other even when different because each on its own gives others reasons to discriminate and cause problems of power inequalities. In the reading, it is stated, “There is no single gene particular to one race. The physical differences apparent between races, such as skin color, have no bearing on other characteristics, such as intelligence, facial characteristics, and so on… Yet in American society, these physical differences have been used to differentiate people into separate groups such as white, black, or Asian, both on an everyday level and at the level of government classification” (Rodriguez 19). Basically, people see another person on the outside and automatically assign them a race when in all actuality, the person can be mixed with black and white, ethnicity is Chinese, and could have culturally grown up Jamaican. The problem is this is something people would never know just by associating a race by the color of the skin. It also states,  “Moreover these categorizations are ordered in hierarchical ways, which has resulted in people being treated unequally” (Rodriguez 19). This week, I can reflect on what I have learned so far about peoples’ experiences migrating to America and the smaller things in life that they had to run into that changed the way they felt about Americans and everything they expected was not what they expected.

          From the NY Times video, I gathered that out of the experiences of Asian racializion, each person that spoke on an experience has been disenfranchised in that moment that they reevaluated. Even to a person that would not understand the meaning of race, you can tell that everyone in this video was hurt by the comment about race they have heard growing up in life. All of their stories had involved a depiction of their race just by someone analyzing or glimpsing at an Asian’s voice, skin color, attire, and culture. One story that gave me an epiphany was when Rinku said “When my parents talked about Americans they clearly meant white Americans, when they meant any other type of Americans they named them, they said Black people, or Latinos, or Native- American Indians was the language they would use for Native people, so I understood early on that a real American was a White American, everybody else had to be qualified” (Rinku). Obviously race is a social construct because it seems that you need to be the “right” race to be an American just like society dictates what you can be in life based on race. Another story that actually shocked me came from Hasan as he said “My first experience with race was, when I was six years old I fell in love with this girl named Janis Mallo and I went up to her in the sandbox and I was like, “Janis I love you!” and she was like, “You’re the color of poop!” And that was memory number one with racism, and I didn’t know what that was, I just took that literally and was like, “What? Ahhh it’s not rubbing off,” like it was very terrifying” (Hasan).

          In the documentary, Purdue states, “we don’t realize that race is an idea that evolves over time, that it has a history, that it is constructed by society to further certain political and economic goals” (Purdue). I believe that in this statement, she evokes the influence society has over the meaning of a word so powerful. The definition of race is so easily distorted and altered around with that even the government use of the word is negative because they start to categorize people to their strengths and capabilities based on their race. For instance, in the documentary science was used to back up or “justify” the superiority of whites over every other race by comparing skull and brain sizes, which was completely ridiculous I think. That example alone proves that race is a social construct because from that time that whites were considered superior, America made sure that it would always be known forever by standing with white privilege and white racists without trying to change that superior vs inferior mindset. 

 

 

1. Yang argues a theory of Asian immigration to the United States because he believes that there are more to the reasons why over 9 million Asians have immigrated here. In Yang’s perspective, there is only an underdeveloped one sided story and assumptions given, but no one has a full understanding yet. In existing theories he claims that they fail to conduct information like the multiple causes, multi level processes, initiating and sustaining forces and historical and contemporary flows.
2. In movies that I have watched I have found that migrating to America is the result of social or political issues. For instance, a movie that I have watched is named “Coming to America”.  In this movie,  it was pretty ironic that an African born  prince came to America to find a wife and obviously that is not a common reason for why people would migrate, but it is a way of opportunity. The prince could not find resources in Africa to fulfill his need for a wife.  In fact, some people come to America to feel “normal” by familiarizing themselves with what’s going on in the United States now and what’s popular. I have family in Jamaica that sometimes see me posting on social media and ask me what I mean by what I post. They even ask how I put on makeup the way I do as if it is an American thing to do. All of that is to say that people reason with migrating to the United States to get a feel of different cultures and diversity. In high school, I read a novel that was focused on a young girl migrating to another place and her backstory was she was poor and tried to find a way out of poverty so she decided to move to the states as a new start and a means of opportunity. These  explanations compare to the theory that Yang puts forth because it shows the differences that people want to explore here in America. For example, Yang states, “A fundamental premise of this theory is that people normally do not engage in international migration if conditions or life opportunities of their home country are the same as or similar to those of another country; namely, people migrate across national borders because of differences between the homeland and a foreign land in economic, political, social, and environmental conditions or in life chances” (Yang 16). Yang’s three clusters of factors he believes we need to look at in order to have an understanding of Asian migration to America is intercountry disparities, multilevel connections, and migration policies. To add to his clusters, I would say finding the root to the issues that occur in the nation that push people into making that decision to migrate to America.