The Chinese Americans

Chinese Americans are another group of immigrants who were treated unjustly by Americans because they belong to another culture. Embracing another culture readily is not a common practice here in America. It does not matter what level of education a person has, the qualification that makes him or her eligible for the bountifulness and opportunities that America offers depends a lot on what culture group a person belong to. I can remember books I read as a fourth grader about the treatment of the Irish when they first came to America. That in itself was odd to me. Unjust treatment is a part and some of the package that is dished out to immigrants,even though the first group of immigrants were welcomed and assissted in settling in their new environment, the values they passed on to their decendants does not reflect that the courtesy they recieved was passed on in making new comers feel welcome.

I know this was originally started as a thread for Chinese Americans, but I have a great resource for the history of Korean-Americans. It's a series that originally aired on PBS, called Airirang. It's probably available through the PBS website or Amazon. The two part documentary talks about early Korean immigration in Hawaii to current Korean American history, focusing especially on the 1992 riots. They also talked about Korean immigrants in odd places--who knew Koreans lived in South Carolina?

You might want to attend the Korean Workshop offered by the Korean Cultural Center in the Spring. You can attain the Arrirang video Judi is talking about if you attend the seminar. They give out so many great resources for class as well as self-reading. The dates are April 12 and April 26. It's a lot of fun. Plus, you can sample some Korean food! Think it over.

One thing I have always been interested about the immigrant experience to the US is how and why some groups of immigrants had different experiences then others and how this affected their situation today. For example Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the 19th century experienced many similarities and together their experience was considerably different from that of Koreans and other Asians who came in the second half of the twentieth century. There are a lot of resources on Asian immigration to the US, but does anyone know of a good comparative study of Asian immigration to the US?

Thanks for the book suggestions. Anther issue involving Asian-American I am interested in is how and why white prejudice against Asians has declined so much. I find it kind of amazing that we could go from interning Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during WWII to today when over half of all Japanese-Americans marry outside their race (or so I have heard). Mixed race marriages are less common for other Asian-Americans, but overall the rate is about 25%. Part of the answer an clearly be attributed to the general decline in racism in the US over the last 50 years. But I think its interesting just how extreme the change has been. I am not in any way saying there is no racism against Asian-Americans any more, but the difference between today and 1940 is amazing. Do either of these books discuss this issue in any detail?

Another question I have about Asian-Americans is whether the ethnic divisions between them will disolve over time. For example the ethnic distictions among white Americans used to be very strong. My dad can remember his neighborhood in Bridgeport Conn. being divided into Polish (his), Jewish, Greek and Italian areas. But today most of this is gone and pretty much everybody is just "white" now. Is this likely to happen to Asian-Americans? I guess something like this has already happened in Hawaii, but that may be a result of the fact that far more men then women immigrated leading to greater intermarriage.

I can agree to that, since I came from Central America I like to eat at places that serve the food I was used to eating back home (unfortunately there aren't many). I like to hang around barrios that can speak Spanish, because I associate with them in one way or another. Even thought we don't like to be called Mexicans because we are not all from there we do like to be around people who can speak Spanish (even if some words are different). I think many immigrants feel the same way, because it creates confort and safety.