ASAM 40 - The Chinese American Community

1) Who are you? (Think about how you answered this before, you can even look at what you stated. This time, try to answer it with a renewed sense of identity. Think about the various identities you carry and state if they have changed at all-or maybe it has not changed at ALL? Keep in mind this is about YOURSELF). Of course you haven't changed, but maybe there is a change in understanding of the Chinese American community/experience? Prior to this course, I did not know that Asian-American identity issues was a “thing.” In my limited circle of friends, when I discuss the different sort of racism and “nationlessness” that Asian-Americans face, I was told that “it’s just me.” I’m glad that the identity-exclusion issue has been pointed out: Asian-Americans face not quite the stereotypical racism that African-American media has made known, and are regarded as an outsider in both Asia and America.   2) What are your take-aways from this course?  I learned abou...

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...

Hazel Ying Lee helped the airforce during WW2 through their WASP program and became the first Asian American woman in the Airforce. When doing her job, a midwestern farmer thought he Japanese had invaded - but she had the balls to set him right! I’m going to propose an Asians prefer the establishment and deny conspiracies perspective as to why  we’ve never heard of her. Her death was due to an airforce dispatcher error who gave the same directions to land to her as another of her colleague.  Imagine this scenario in a movie.  Ominous music. You feel that bitter taste in your mouth and want to cringe as a grave injustice is about to happen. A general (or maybe petty officer) who received the command from above to issue this deadly command masked as an error, because someone wanted her dead. Of course, they knew their system, and this would just be accounted for as an error and not a murder...

1) What impact did the 1906 earthquake make on both the physical and cultural feel of Chinatown? (How were the living spaces impacted? How did the feel of the community change now that it was no longer a men's society in terms of sights, sounds, demographics?  Who were invited in to increase revenue?).   The 1906 earthquake would mark a breakpoint in the architecture and family-structure of Chinatown. Though it killed hundreds or thousands of denizens of Chinatown, it would enable the mass migration of thousands more Chinese. Because all the city documents were destroyed, no one could tell how many children a particular Chinese-American had in China - thus, “paper sons” were born, where the “right” to go to America could be bought “on paper” (though you would have to memorize long 200+page documents to pass a stringent interrogation on Angel Island or elsewhere, so that immigration officers could be convinced you are actually this alleged son). Because most of o...

1)   How   was the immigration experience for the first wave Chinese woman   more difficult   than their male counterparts? What obstacles/hurdles did the women face   that the men did not , what similarities did they share? (This can be shown socially/culturally and politically).   2) The Chinese women were victims of both political and social control/restrictions, yet the Lee article speaks to their ability to take matters into their own hands. What were the various ways that these women were "active" in their immigration process? (What tactics did they use to prove both their proper character and class status to ease their immigration process)? 1) The women, like the men, were seen as foreigners likely if nefarious nature. As exemplified by Eva May's stereotyped Hollywood roles, the women were seen as villains - who though they did not get the job-stealing opportunities (from the white man's POV) that the men got - had other deadlier roles such ...

1) What were the various reasons for high anti-Asian sentiment?   (Remember to use your own words).   2) What were the various tactics used to rid of the Chinese communities? (Choose   one town   and illustrate their method/methods ) 3) What were the forms of resistance that the Chinese exemplified?   4) What was the main reasoning behind the strong Chinese resistance? (Why not just go away?) 1) What were the various reasons for high anti-Asian sentiment?  To the lower class/working class non-Asians, the primary reason seemed to be that of job security. Asians were cheaper and more efficient — more employable. They might even be seen as the human embodiment of the industrialization factory machines they fear are taking over their traditional trades. To the ruling class, as Tataki would quote, the founding fathers wanted a homogenous race, essentially a “white America” - and the Chinese looked different. While the African-Americans also don’t fit t...

Part 1 1) What do the Chinese agricultural worker and the agricultural workers of today have in common? (Think in terms of contributions, need for labor, and treatment of laborers). 2) What do Asian owned businesses of today such as: nail shops, convenient stores, gas stations, and dry cleaning businesses all have in common with the laundrymen of the past? (Think about how/why would they enter into these types of businesses? Is it a skillset brought over from the homeland? A "trend"/niche that a couple people learned and trained their fellow countryment to do?) Part 2 In the Choy, Takaki and Kwong texts, the role of associations within the Chinatowns were discussed. Membership depended on surname, village, district, and sometimes through initiation. Kwong's text provided a deeper examination of the internal conflicts that these associations face amongst members, as well as with the Chinatown community whereas Choy allowed for examination of specific associations within S...

1) Takaki makes it a point to illustrate that these Chinese men came to the United States as sojourners. What is a sojourner/what is their goal? How likely was it to obtain that goal? Why or why not? What were their motivations to stay in the United States as well as to return to China? 2) One of the first experiences of working in the United States for the Chinese was in the mining industry. There they gained a sense of what type of environment they were entering in terms of discrimination. What were some of the major obstacle(s) that they faced in the mining industry? (Think socially, politically, economically). 3) Besides the difficulties that were imposed by their peers and employers, the Chinese also had to deal with aspects such as terrain and weather. Takaki spoke specifically of one of the worse winters they would face while working on the rails. What happened during the winter of 1866-1867? How did the Chinese respond? Why would the actions of the Chinese during...

1) List at least three major   differences   between the five Asian immigrant groups? (For this question I am looking more of generalizations, not specifics to each ethnic group-that's #3.  Also, this is from the course materials, not generalizations like language, culture, point of emigration). 2) What three   similarities   do they share? (What commonalities do you see that run through 3 or more ethnic groups if we are talking about their experiences?)   3) Illustrate   ONE   specific trait that belongs to   each   ethnic group (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipinos and Asian Indians). Something that is distinctly part of their own experience. (push or pull factor, demographic difference, immigrant status, immigration period).  Differences. The numbers varied quite a lot among the first five Asian immigrant groups - from only about 6400 Asian Indians to over 380,000 Chinese. Also, the times in which each group came also diffe...