ASAM 40 - The Chinese American Community

1)  What are the similarities or differences in the motivation, community reactions, and legal outcomes in any of the hate crimes presented this week (the weblinks and the Chin case) and the runout/burnout periods that you have studied before?    The similarities between the runout/burnout periods and the Asian American hate crimes is primarily due to economic supply-demand reasons. Asians are often willing (or need) to work under lower pay and sub-par conditions that a white or fairly-unionized worker would not go for. Thus, they are perceived to take both jobs and fair work conditions away from white workers. The main difference is that for the Chin case, the Asians were able to seemingly build a national civil rights platform - while in the earlier cases, the various hate crimes seems scattered across the country.   2)  Why do you think there is little known about Asian American hate crimes?   Little is known about Asian American cr...

1) a) What happened in the Chin case? (Who were the assailants? What specifically happened on the night of June 19th, 1982?)  b) What were the motivations? (This can be based on the film, readings, lectures AS WELL AS your own interpretation). On the night of June 19th, Vincent Chin went out for a bachelor’s party before his wedding at a sleazy strip club. As they purported to enjoy the venue, they were apparently becoming the target of an impending hate crime that would escalate into Chin’s death. A stripper named Racine Cowell reported that another patron, a former motor foreman named Ronald Ebens was saying things that blamed the Detroit economic plight on the Asian “motherfuckers.” Ebens would later beat Chin to death with a baseball bat. Initially, Ebens was acquitted. Implied in context, the motivations were racial, thus this was in the jurisdiction of a civil rights case that took quite a bit to build up. However, taken out of context, the words could be used...

1) What is the history of Chinese in Vietnam? What was their role, how did they gain that role? How was the privileged role eventually a disadvantage? China and Vietnam have had a long history of warfare, being neighboring countries. The Chinese have always been economically savvy and have functioned well despite being out of their homeland. They acted as middlemen to foreign trade, but were seen as exploitive to the locals. This would eventually force the Chinese to flee as refugees from the country after the Vietnam War.   2) Gold mentioned the various resources that the Chinese use in their ethnic economies. List two and describe them how they are used to enable success.  Capital - Although the Chinese-Vietnamese refugees were not able to transfer their capital to the US, they were able to tap into the Asian immigrant support systems. Being ethnically Chinese opened doors to funding from the associations and other ethnic interest groups,...

1) What were the push factors for these Fuzhounese immigrants?  What was going on with the government, the creation of jobs, movement/growth of labor from region to region? Factories were spouting up all over Fuzhou, but the employers wanted to hire rural Chinese who would not demand better wages or shorter hours. Unable to work to be able to afford to stay, native Fuzhounese were thus displaced from their native homes and sought to immigrate to the US.   2) Why would they have to resort to illegal immigration, as well as consciously subject themselves to it? Why is their experience different from the Chinese in other regions? (Think about support systems and if the were able to immigrate under the three main 1965 immigration act categories). There were three support system categories available to the 1965 immigration act: family reunification, refugee sponsorship, and employment based sponsorship. The Fuzhounese who were displaced were not connecte...

  Inspired by a friend’s father from the 1980s/1990s 1) Were you sponsored by family, work, or here as a result of war/US government sponsorship? When did you come and under which category did you fall under? (Professional, family reunification, or refugee). I was a lawyer in Korea. I came to try giving my children a better future, assuming that I would be able to maintain my professional standing here.   2) What is your current occupation, and what was your occupation in your home country? (professional, student, unskilled worker, housewife, shop owner, waiter, grocery store clerk, etc). What socioeconomic class do you fall into? However, I had to open a small Korean restaurant in order to support my family in the US. I became the working class.   3) What was your experience like in the US in your first six months here? (Difficulties, immediate needs etc). I tried to get a job as a lawyer, but I was told that I did not have the pape...

1) What are the main differences between the first wave Chinese and the post 1965 Chinese immigrants? (Lists are fine) Second Wave vs First Wave - Post 1965 immigrants, had better gender balance as they were past the days of the exclusion laws.   - Many immigrants were better educated, not exploited for entry to meet burgeoning pre-industrial revolution high demands of cheap labor.   - They were also more ready to take on urban civilization, being already accustomed to cities, rather than rural environments.   - Came from all areas of China, rather than just the impacted areas in first wave.   - Finally, the numbers. Not mere thousands or hundreds, but millions. 1 million in 1965 to 14 million in 2010   2) What are the main differences between an ethnic enclave and an ethnoburb? a)How do they function differently?  b) Why would one choose to live in one over the other? (Who lives in each location).  An ethnic encl...