Author: Kai

Archive Project _ASN114W

Phi discusses how conservative Asian Americans are when it came to societal issues such as police brutality. He talks about how Asian Americans support the police and how they supported a petition for the NYPD, but then won’t show the same support when one of their own community members was murdered by the same police. Also,there were many  that stated they were tired of being pushed around especially when politicians who are suppose to represent them did nothing to the effect of protecting them as people. Phi explains no matter how hard we, in this case (Asian Americans) attempt to assimilate into American culture, we simply cannot fully be accepted because of transgressions against them. Chinese conservatives often take the side of the oppressors. This is because they are conditioned to believe that other minorities such as the Black community are “lazy criminals” and are responsible for “all the hate crimes towards Asians.” For example, as we all have seen, the violence and xenophobia against Asian populations have been on the rise since the covid-19 pandemic here in America. Many of these crimes have portrayed the perpetrators as Black Americans as a threat to Chinese businesses in particular. Because of this, the surge of Anti-Asian hate crimes have sparked protest in favor of NYPD. They always support the police, and are in favor of times when the police is unjust to the black community. And unfortunately many Chinese Americans don’t care about the lives of black peoples due to this hatred that they have towards them. The goal of this letter is to make the author’s family understand that Black Americans aren’t their  enemies and that it is wrong for Asian Americans to be siding with the law enforcement aka their oppressors because, their support of NYPD doesn’t guarantee  protection.Instead Asian Americans should be more accepting towards the black community, understanding  that they too are minorities who also struggle in a society where the system wasn’t made to favor them.I think this person reached their goal with this letter because  it not only addressed their community directly but, addressed a common issues we have been hearing between Asian Americans and Black Americans.

For resources, I chose media coverage recommendations. The problem at hand here is directed specifically towards journalist covering the pandemic and those affected. The focus is portrayal of Asians and Asian Americans. According to these resources, the portrayal is in the negative which fuels xenophobia and racism against Asians. The resources go on to name things reporters should refrain from doing,such as recording generic views of Chinatown and avoid using phrases like “Wuhan Virus”, “Chinese Coronavirus”, and “China Coronavirus.” For stories, I picked ‘Tired’ by Alice Tsui. Tsui writes about how common anti-Asian sentiments have become during this pandemic. There has been a huge increase in slurs and verbal attacks against Asian American’s because they are seen to have “started” the coronavirus. She provides various amount of instances of people making nasty comments in public at anybody who “looks” Asian. The notion that Asians are more likely to have corona simply because of the way they look is obviously ridiculous. And for Frameworks I chose “With love, from the end of the world” by Kai Cheng Thom. This statement by Kai Cheng Thom, helps us understand the discontent among the people due to the most powerful people in America. In 2016, when Trump was elected, it affected  many people’s lives, most of them are gay and Black. In the years that followed, many brutal catastrophes occurred. I chose these excerpts because the all seem to be relevant topics that I hope will cease to exist even after the pandemic. Xenophobia, discrimination and  gender-based violence, will continue to be relevant topics that affect everyone, especially marginalized groups specifically Asian demographics that have been affected more in this pandemic. What especially stood out during the pandemic was increase emphasizing on the systematic racism and other social injustice problems as if these topics were not occurring before the pandemic.

In “The Forgotten Asian Refugees Fed Into The U.S. Prison System” by Kimberly Yam, it discusses how many Cambodians who fled to the United States with hopes of Starting over. In an attempt to flee their hometown in Cambodia due to a communist tyranny, people like Phal Sok and his family looked towards the United States for a place to thrive. The country that once accepted them with open arms even under the name of a refugee, was the same country that turned on them. Forcing them,back to their homeland even though they had never been there. Under the Trump administration, South East Asians live their life in fear of being deported due to increased activities of ICE. In the article, ICE arrested many refugees from South Asia and these refugees were then deported from the country. Based on my opinion, it’s very unfair how refugees are treated here. How does the same country that accepts them in doesn’t care about them at all? It is just really sad to see how bad immigration policies are becoming 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.

I  learned that  the criteria for citizenship that it never favors POC and POC often have to prove themselves to be considered citizens in the US. In ‘Ozawa and Thind’, it is pretty clear that being white was the gold standard. The fact that Ozawa had to constantly fight over the fact that he isn’t ‘Caucasian’ in order to gain citizenship is pretty absurd. The fact that Ozawa had to assimilate himself fully into the American culture while detaching himself from his Japanese culture in order to prove his loyalty to America and gain citizenship is down right ridiculous. Also Lopez says “Japanese immigrants shared much in common with their European counterparts, yet every European immigrant group regardless of national origin, had the right of naturalization and precisely because they possessed it no matter how beleaguered they were.” Europeans had more privileges  to becoming citizens, and yet Asians had to fill out the loyalty questionnaire to show their loyalty to the U.S. Even though they say white Europeans had it easy, there was still plenty of prejudice for specific groups of European immigrants, like Irish, and Italian immigrants. I think anybody should be able to become a U.S. citizen, unless they committed any  federal or murder crimes. All that really matters is to just live here and abide by the laws. If you live, work, and pay taxes here, you’re just as American as someone whose family has been here for 5 generations. Obviously skin color is not something that matters whatsoever and should never matter anyways.

Based on the readings and film, Chinese immigrants were excluded and banned from basic rights such as working, letting their children attend school, and even migrating to the United States.In the San Fransisco Chronicle, “How early SF kept Chinese children out of the schoolhouse,” the article clarifies that “They were denied even separate schools like those accorded to blacks and Indians, who were granted that right in 1874. The Chinese community argued that it was grossly unfair that they had to pay taxes and yet were denied the right to send their children to public schools.” This quote in the article is significant because it points out that blacks and Indians were granted the right to have their own separate schools, but the Chinese would not be granted their own school and still had to pay taxes without having the children in schools. However, “In 1878, 1,300 people of Chinese descent petitioned the Legislature, arguing that the 3,000 Chinese children in the state had the right to a public education.”In the Timeline article , “The first Mexican border wall was actually to keep out Chinese people”,  the article reveled “Editorial cartoons in newspapers of the time depicted the Chinese as shifty villains.” The article also express that “the white public was stirred to anger by the presence of what they called the “yellow peril.” These statements expressed how the white Americans felt about the Chinese community coming into “their land.” The similarities today, can compare to when Trump wanted to ban people of Islam faith from America, just like in SF, many people retaliated and protest against his choice.  I do have questions wondering if there are any relatives of the protesters from San Fransisco, that can tell us about the protest and treatment of the Chinese.

I think completing the assignments and showing up on time to Zoom is going well. I would like to changed maybe having more modern videos about Asian Americans. More Asian American movies begin shown as well as more documentaries about them in other settings of the world, even though this class is supposed to be about Asian Americans in America. A song I would add would be Twice – Fancy, the reason is because the group is a K-pop girl group that has members from three  different countries and also the song is catchy.

As I was watching the video “A Conversation with Asian Americans on Race.”It made me think that in American society, the majority of  Americans are white. Americans of other skin colors, such as Asian Americans, Latinx Americans and African Americans, will be labeled in some negative connotation words,  while Americans with only white skin will be called Americans directly. It definitely makes me uncomfortable that people still face discrimination and receive unfair treatment based on the color of their skin. Also, in the “A Conversation with Asian Americans on Race”  all of the stories involved had depiction of their race just by someone analyzing or glimpsing at an Asian’s voice, skin color, attire, and culture. The “Race: The Power of an Illusion” makes some very good points.  Unlike what people in history assume that people of different races are fundamentally different, all humans are in fact fundamentally extremely similar. Obviously race is a social construct because it seems that you need to be the “right” race, meaning not anything darker than the clouds in the sky to be an American. 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. This instance shows how enslaved Africans were really treated and shown to whites. Even though, we have “slightly” change for the better according to race, more needs to be done so that racism can not exist at all in America.

I believe the common explanations for people migrating to the United States are well known by us all. The reasons  can be for  increased opportunity, increased quality in life, family, etc. Yang’s theory of Asian immigration is because of push factors. For example natural disasters, population pressures, economic hardships, political disturbances, and lastly environmental disadvantages. Also,”according to this theory, the poorest
countries should have the highest level of emigration because push factors
are the strongest there.” I have seen shows like 90 day fiance where they come to America to find love for themselves or family. Another example someone might leave , is if the person is part of the LGBT+ community, as it can be illegal in some Asian countries or if their family does not approve of them and leave at their own choice. Yang states “differences between the homeland and a foreign land in economic, political, social, and environmental conditions or in life chances.” These are some examples of why people immigrate to different countries like America. Other clusters I would add to Yang’s theory would be religious freedom and like I said previously LGBT+ and gender freedom. People in countries like Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia are being thrown in jail because of who they are and what they are sexual attract to.

After reading the Lee chapter and watching the documentary, I’ve learn more about how many countries had a hand in dealing with slavery, specifically of the Asian population. I already knew that Spain invade Philippines and England invade India;however, I did not know that there were Asians in Mexico(New Spain) and many of them had a prominent role in society as a mayor and a religious philanthropist. Another example of Asian mistreatment was the first Chinese immigrant Afong Moy. The Americans would treat Moy like a item or object, not realizing she is a human being and not anyone’s play toy for entertainment. The came to Filipinos came to  America, specifically Louisiana because bayou had excellent fishing and shrimping. The stories today about immigration, does not compare to what early Asian immigration had to go thorough. In present time today, immigration is easier due to the fact they are not being enslaved to travel and have more free will. People will not gawk or treat them like a object when they get here to America. I believed the reason that many of the ways changed was due to the civil rights laws and also human rights laws. Many Asian immigrants were treated unfairly and like trash, it has gotten somewhat better, but its not as harsh as it was in the early days.