Asian Americans
“The United
States is a racially diverse country. Modern issues of “race”, as well as its
impact in the political and economic development of the nation, have been
examined by numerous historians and researchers across a variety of academic
disciplines. In the United States since its early history, Native Americans,
African Americans, and European Americans were classified as belonging to
different races.” [1] Except the main three races, there are also some minority
races occur in the United States such as Asian Americans,
even though the number of these people is less than other races.
Asian
Americans are Americans of Asian people who originally come from Asia. Asian
Americans is refers people have Asian ancestry citizens of United States,
including the Chinese, the Philippines, Indian, Vietnam, Korea and Japanese.
Population growth in Asian Americans is the fastest minority groups, according
to a survey, it shows Asian Americans population has doubled since 1970 and it
estimated to rise by 20 million until 2020, which accounts for 6% of total Americans
population. In this paper, I will mainly introduce the history of Asian
Americans, work force and racial prejudice happened in
Asian Americans respectively.
Spickard
(2007) shows that “Asian American” was an idea invented in the 1960s to bring
together Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino Americans for strategic political
purposes. Soon other Asian-origin groups were added, such as Korean,
Vietnamese, Hmong and South Asian Americans. [2] Chinese are people of full or
partial Chinese – particularly Han Chinese – ethnicity who hold American
nationality. Chinese Americans constitute one group of overseas Chinese and
also a subgroup of East Asian Americans, which is further a subgroup of Asian
Americans. Many Chinese Americans are immigrants along with their descendants
from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, as well as from other countries
in Southeast Asia and South America that include large populations of the
Chinese diaspora. [ 3] The main goal for those Chinese came to the US was to
earn lots of money because they think the US was full of chance and dollar when
they were in china. After the railroad was finished in 1869, most of them moved
out to other large cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and west coast. By now,
in these large cities where Chinese prefer to live have famous China town.
Japanese
Americans (日系アメリカ人, Nikkei Amerikajin?) are American people of
Japanese heritage. Japanese Americans have historically been among the three
largest Asian American communities, but in recent decades, it has become the
sixth largest group at roughly 1,304,286, including those of mixed-race or
mixed-ethnicity. In the 2000 census, the largest Japanese American communities
were found in California with 394,896, Hawaii with 296,674, Washington with
56,210, New York with 45,237, and Illinois with 27,702. [4 ]
A Hmong
American is a resident of the United States who is of ethnic Hmong descent.
Hmong Americans are one group of Asian Americans. Many Lao Hmong war refugees
resettled in the U.S. following the communist takeover of Laos in 1975.
Beginning in December of that year, the first Hmong refugees arrived in the
U.S., mainly from refugee camps in Thailand; however, only 3,466 were granted
asylum at this time under the Refugee Assistance Act of 1975. [ 5] According to
a survey, there are around 200,000 Hmong lived in United States include the
majority came from Asia and some was born in recent 20 years. When Hmong came
to US, they did not know English so they faced lots of difficulties at that
time. Most of them could only rely on welfare money from US government. After
several years, they began to study English and they tried to find job, but they
could only do some physical jobs.
Since the
United States is a diverse country with different people of people, so racial
discriminations are occurred past and present are obvious. In the United States
all citizens are supposed to be considered equal. You can not discriminate
people based on their racial or religious backgrounds. However, today in the
United States, there is also some racial prejudice happened on people of color.
Japanese-American internment was the relocation and internment by the United
States government in 1942 of about 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who
lived along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called "War
Relocation Camps," in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
The internment of Japanese Americans was applied unequally throughout the
United States. All who lived on the West Coast of the United States were
interned, while in Hawaii, where the 150,000-plus Japanese Americans composed
over one-third of the population, an estimated 1,200to 1,800 were interned. Of
those interned, 62% were American citizens. [6] The internment of Japanese Americans
happened during World War II was unequal in the United States. All those who
lived in the United States and Hawaii were interned. The main reason of this
internment is the attack on Pearl Harbor. the Heart Mountain War Relocation
Center in northwestern Wyoming was a barbed-wire-surrounded enclave with
unpartitioned toilets, cots for beds, and a budget of 45 cents daily per capita
for food rations Because most internees were evacuated from their West Coast homes
on short notice and not told of their assigned destinations, many failed to
pack appropriate clothing for Wyoming winters which often reached temperatures
below 0 degrees Fahrenheit (−18 degrees Celsius). Many families were forced to
simply take the "clothes on their backs. On December 18, 1944, the United
States government discharged these internees and let them went back their
former homes. “Decades of silence over the unjust incarceration of 120,000
Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II were pierced by
the persistent questions of third- generation Japanese Americans, shown here
holding a candlelight service at the Japanese Buddhist Church in New York City,
February 1992, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Executive Order 9066.
The signs indicate the names of the concentration camps and the states in which
they were located.” [7]
On the other
hand, students in University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State
University campaigned against reformation of history
class. The main cause for this student’s movement was what college officers did
not legitimate demands to students about reformation of history class. In US’s
universities, they generally implement education according to Europe and United
States instead of thinking about Asians students, which is a typical racial discrimination.
Under this educational system, a number of Asian students have no awareness
about their own race. Even as Chinese, they seems did not know the reason that
why they had to live in Chinatown. Asian Students hoped history class could get
reformation. Asian students were left out from the college, finally they were
provoked. This incident caused angry protest, Asian students in San Francisco state University strike for around 5
months. After 5 months’ strike, San Francisco state University set the first
course of Asian Americans in the United States in 1969. Later, University of
California, Berkeley also set a class of research on minority race. In the
early 1970s, Universities in California and near east coast set classes about
Asian in history, social and culture.
“The first
significant Chinese immigration to America began with the California Gold Rush
of 1848-1855, and continued with subsequent large labor projects, such as the
building of the First Transcontinental Railroad. During the early stages of the
gold rush, when surface gold was plentiful, the Chinese were tolerated, if not
well received. As gold became harder to find and competition increased,
animosity toward the Chinese and other foreigners increased. After being
forcibly driven from the mines, most Chinese settled in enclaves in cities,
mainly San Francisco, and took up low end wage labor such as restaurant and
laundry work. With the post Civil War economy in decline by the 1870s,
anti-Chinese animosity became politicized by labor leader Denis Kearney and his
Workingman's Party as well as by California Governor John Bigler, both of whom
blamed Chinese "coolies" for depressed wage levels. Another
significant anti-Chinese group organized in California during this same era was
the Supreme Order of Caucasians with some 60 chapters statewide.”[8] “The
Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by Chester A.
Arthur on May 6, 1882, following revisions made in 1880 to the Burlingame
Treaty of 1868. Those revisions allowed the U.S. to suspend Chinese
immigration, a ban that was intended to last 10 years. This law was repealed by
the Magnuson Act on December 17, 1943”. [9] “The Chinese Exclusion Act was one
of the most significant restrictions on free immigration in U.S. history. The
Act excluded Chinese "skilled and unskilled laborers employed in
mining" from entering the country for ten years under penalty of
imprisonment and deportation. Many Chinese were relentlessly beaten just
because of their race. The few Chinese non-laborers who wished to immigrate had
to obtain certification from the Chinese government that they were qualified to
immigrate, which tended to be difficult to prove. Volpp argues that the
"Chinese Exclusion Act" is a misnomer, in that it is assumed to be the
starting point of Chinese exclusionary laws in the United States. She suggests
attending to the intersections of race, gender, and U.S. citizenship in order
to both understand the restraints of such a historical tendency and make
visible Chinese female immigration experiences, including the Page Act of 1875.”[10]
“The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed by the 1943 Magnuson Act, which
permitted Chinese nationals already residing in the country to become
naturalized citizens and stop hiding from the threat of deportation. It also
allowed a national quota of 105 Chinese immigrants per year. Large scale
Chinese immigration did not occur until the passage of the Immigration and
Nationality Act of 1965. Despite the fact that the exclusion act was repealed
in 1943, the law in California that Chinese people were not allowed to marry
whites was not repealed until 1948. Other states had such laws until 1967,then
the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Loving v. Virginia that
anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional.” [11]
Asian
American women workers, long exploited by the garment industry in the United
States, were encouraged to fight back by the Asian American Movement. In 1974,
Chinese garment workers of the Greater Chinese American Sewing Company went on
strike to protest poor working conditions and fight for their right to
unionize. Through sheer persistence, they finally attained a favorable
settlement ten years later. [12]
Overall, this
paper mainly talked about racial issues among Asian Americans happened in
recently years, which was divided into three main parts the history of Asian
Americans, work force and racial prejudice happened in Asian Americans. For
those three main ideas, I come up with couple examples such as
Japanese-American internment and Asian American women workers movement. “Each
group of Asians in America has had a long history of fighting for equality and
justice, using its members’ common cultural heritage and ethnic identity as the
basis for collective action.” [13]
Source, work cited reference.......
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_in_the_United_States.
September 22, 2012.
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Asian_Americans.
September 25, 2012.
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_American.
December 16, 2012.
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Americans.
December 12, 2012.
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong_American.
December 8,2012.
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese-American_internment.
December 13, 2012.
[7];[12];[13]Wei, “Asian American”,
Temple University Press, Philadephia 19122, published 1993, Printed in the
United states of America. Page 162, 165, 1
[8];[9];[10];[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act.
December 14, 2012.
