Asian American Review in Race and Social Formations

Class Project
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Class Project
Introduction
This paper will focus on Asian American interviews to unravel thematic issues surrounding race and social formations. The term Asian Americans refer to immigrants coming from all parts of Asia. It is a heterogeneous cluster of Asian Americans, which may share some standard features and has unique features that permeate different ethnic groups (Balgopal, 2013). 
I interviewed Chris, who is a 23 year American Chinese man, to get his experience in what it means to live in the U.S. Chris says he was born in Los Angeles by Chinese parents who had migrated to the U.S from Hong Kong. According to him, racial and identities raise many concerns for him. Chris says that despite the idea that he was born in America, he still retains the Chinese cultural values and practices, and he always connects with his family relatives in Hong Kong. He talks about a closely-knit Asian community in Los Angeles, which forms a basic social unit characterized by unique values and practice but reports that some elements of original Asian culture have been lost and replace with a bit of Americanization ideation. Asians in the United States experience discrimination interpersonally and across many institutional settings, including housing and health care. He finds life in the U.S quite challenging owing to the institution and racial discrimination and aggression.
From my interaction with Chris through the interview, I find that the American Asian community is a close social unit with distinctive cultural values, principles, and practices, but might have lost some Asian cultural heritage. However, Asian America faces challenges of systemic discrimination and racism.
Theme 1: Concept of Race and Racism among American Asian Communities
When I asked Chris about his race, he perceives himself as Asian or Chinese. I also asked him whether he enjoys his citizenship like any other American Citizen, which he responds that he belongs to minority groups. More often, he is treated and perceived as a ‘foreigner.’ Chris feels that the Asian communities in America are often discriminated against. For instance, they are unlikely to be treated like their whites counterparts in the healthcare system. In the United States, Asian Americans are often considered a threat to a nation that promoted a whites-only immigration policy. More often, they are stereotyped and discriminated against in workplaces.
The Asian Americans began moving to American in significant numbers during the California Gold Rush. The Chinese who migrated at such a time primarily came to do mining but later engaged in Transcontinental Railroad and agriculture (Guo, 2016). When jobs in these industries disappeared, Chinese ventured into manufacturing. In the early days, white Americans were anxious about losing their jobs due to the influx of Chinese people displacing them from jobs. The entry of the Chinese appeared to threaten American independence and freedom.as a result, in 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Acts, which restricted further access of Chinese into America (Guo, 2016). This history provides a snippet onto Asian community development and growth in U.S amidst racial challenges.
Despite the immense ideations to project American society as pluralistic in culture, racism remains a thorny issue that cannot be entirely eradicated. It permeates every aspect of society. Its institutionalization magnifies the problem of racism. Arguably, racism breeds some social injustice due to white community domination and marginalization of minority communities like Chinese Americans.
There is sufficient evidence to suggest the presence of racial discrimination against the Asian Communities in the U.S. In a study by Fradkin et al. (2014), findings indicated substantial racial and ethnic inequalities and disparities in the quality of life among Asian American youth. The authors observed that Asian American youth were worse across three domains, which include physical, social well-being, and global self-worth when compared to whites.
In another study by Mukkamala & Suyemoto (2018), its findings showed 15 themes highlighting the manifestations of discrimination experienced by Asian American women. These themes included a tokenist representative of Asian Americans, mislabeled ethnicity, foreigner, excluded, inevitably successful, smart, and culture-based discrimination. Other discriminative defining themes in the said study entail criminal, bad driver, exotic, not a leader, submissive and passive, cute and small, invisible, and service worker and denying experiences of discrimination. The themes were revealed in personal and professional contexts.
Cheng, Lin & Cha (2015) pointed out that racism could lead to intergenerational conflicts arising in Asian American families and also amplified conflicts amongst mothers resulting in cascading the effects of discrimination on young emerging adults’ depressive concerns. Wang & Atwal's (2015) findings showed that Asian American adolescents perceived more discrimination over time, and acculturation to American culture predicted more perceived discrimination. The perceived discrimination predicted depressive symptoms. In one school, Asian students were verbally and physically abused by fellow students, but school authorities fail to respond appropriately. In many instances, students would throw metal blocks, drink cans, and food at Asian students, while accompanying with ethnic and racial slurs (Niwa et al., 2011). These pieces of evidence define the extent of racial discrimination, bias, or prejudice against the Asian American communities in the U.S.
Some argue that the Asian community, including Chinese Americans, has not witnessed significant racism like other racial minority communities. Between 1940 and 1970, there was a remarkable development amongst Asian Americans where they did surpass not only African Americans' household incomes but also closed the wage that existed between them and the whites (Guo, 2016). Many people opined that this upward mobility was due to investment in education. However, the study by Brown University economist Nathaniel Hilger conflicts the opinion that the tremendous rise in income among the Asian community was due to incredible investment in education. Instead, Hilger’s findings suggest that Asian Americans began to earn more because their fellow Americans were less racist toward them (Guo, 2016).
Initially, the Asian community in the U.S had been perceived as threatening, degenerate and exotic, but as time progress, some transformations occurred that were marked by increased branding of the Asian community as industrious and law-abiding citizens. The media magnified this public image. The shift in the public image regarding the Asian American could have elevated them and reduce the systemic gap that existed between them and the dominant large white populace. Guo (2016) concludes that in an attempt to combat the challenge of racism in American society, the minority ethnic and racial groups have often strived to portray themselves as an upstanding citizen capable of assimilating into the mainstream white culture. The Asian American communities did this by seeking respectability via weaving stories about obedient children and traditional family values. Equally, the Japanese told about wartime services as proof of shared ‘Americanness’ roots. However, African Americans advanced such appeals, but the political leaders appeared to have favored the Asian community (Guo, 2016). The white politicians might have embraced the Asian community to win over allies during the cold war. Discrimination could have been an ugly pract...