Analysis Of In The Kitchen By Henry Louis Gates

In the essay “Growing up Asian in America” by Kesaya E. Noda, being who you are, or accepting yourself is portrayed through her own life story. “Being Japanese means being a danger to the country during the war and knowing how to use chopsticks. I wear this history on my face” (Noda 34). Living in America can be said to be great, from those who are already the average American, because they don’t deal with the everyday life of being racialized. They also don’t have the label of having another ethnicity besides being American. “Clean, quiet, motivated, and determined to match the American way; this is us, and that is the story of our time here” (Noda 35). Kesaya struggled to learn about herself and her history, due to the fact that she didn’t know much about her Japanese race. When finding out that her family had been apart of the Japanese camps, Kesaya found it easier to just go along with the American way instead of being herself because she was ashamed of herself. “I come from a people with long memory and a distinctive grace. We live our thanks. And we are Americans. Japanese- Americans” (Noda 36). Kesaya had then accepted herself as a Japanese- American because she was proud of all that her family, and all Japanese, went through. Being American isn’t just about living in America, or being a citizen, but about knowing that you belong because America is your home. Along with being American, if it officially says it on paper or not,

After I readied Chapter one of Takaki’s book ‘A different Mirror’, he let me have a lot of different reviews about American history. In this book, the author Ronald Takaki focus study race and ethnicity inclusively and comparatively, and he writes " we will focus on several of them that illustrate and illuminate the landscape of our society's diversity." I am from China and I am an Asian American just like Takaki. People always thoughts American’s people is white or black. I remember when I was in The US Army, A group people talked about who they are and where are they from. One white man said I am an American, he looked at me said you are Chinese and he looked at other person said you are Mexican. Why he think he is an American, and another rice is not an American. Most of the American textbook does not have a lot of information about multicultural, but

There was a time when America was segregated; Caucasians and African Americans were forced to attend different restrooms, restaurants, and water fountains. However, the era of segregation has been terminated; now America embraces and appreciates the various cultures and ethnicities that create this melting pot several people call home. Likewise, it is this melting pot, or mosaic, of races that multitudes of individuals have identified themselves with. Thus, race and ethnicity does matter for it portrays vital and crucial roles in the contemporary American society. Furthermore, ethnicity and race brings communities together in unity, determines which traditions and ideals individuals may choose to value, and imposes an impediment for it categorizes humans unjustly.

Throughout the essay, Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections, I found Kwame Anthony Appiah’s claims about social scripts to support my idea that we present ourselves differently depending on the circumstance. There are times when we try to play into the majority, as well as times where we try and fall into the minority; we choose which group we want to highlight depending on which will get us where we want to go.

In this essay, I attempted to lay bare the issues of being an Asian-American and being labeled as an ethnic “other” in modern America. This label of “other” causes them to become marginalized and lose their sense of identity, belonging neither to Western culture nor Eastern culture. In order help stop this loss of identity in Asian-Americans, we must tear down the social construct of the “other” and integrate the different cultures into the melting pot of popular culture. Once we have stopped alienating different cultures, we can then have a moral society that upholds diversity and identity.

Throughout essay “In the Kitchen,” Henry Louis Gates Junior recalls a time when he and his friends and family constantly tried to straighten their African American “kinky” hair. They did this to try to fit in with white people. The writer is using his personal experience as an African American straightening his hair to show how black people felt about assimilating into white society. It was very difficult for blacks to fit in with white people but he remembers how this difficult time brought the black community together.

In the essay “‘blaxican’ and other reminded Americans” Richard Rodrigues states that “I am Chinese, and that is because I live in a Chinese city”. This evidence reveals that in America there are many kinds of cultures you don't need to be considered either black or white.

In this paper I will begin by defining personal culture and national culture. After, I will then elaborate my own personal and national culture. I will continue to talk about the subject with the person that I have chosen for my cultural group, my mother, and I will identify her personal and national culture. Lastly, I will talk about my own personality and how it has a connection with my own natural culture; knowing this is important, it lets us know who we are, and how we act with people who are from different cultures.

For many people, culture and identity are closely tied to identity-- sometimes so closely that the things they do, eat, or say may not even feel like a conscious decision. However, from an outsider’s point of view, it is easy to note the differences between cultures in many different ways. One of the most tangible examples of this is, of course, food. When speaking to many people from older generations, it is easy to see how much food is entwined in their stories from the past, whether they come from far away or are still living where they were born. Throughout Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, food is heavily used in many different ways to represent multiple races.

America is built on diversity. Right or wrong, good or bad, this diversity is a cauldron of creativity and productivity. The sociocultural, economic and psychological diversity in America’s history is fascinating. Society today has many misconceptions about what it means to belong to a particular ethnicity or race, hence why diversity seizes to exist. It is in fact not difficult to categorize oneself according to the American Psychological Association. Studied research demonstrated in the article “The study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race in American Psychology”, when asking a person to choose race, it will always pertain to a social matter.

Kwame Anthony Appiah’s The race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood, questions racial labeling of all sorts. What is the difference between race, ethnicity and culture? Appiah reevaluates people’s ways of thinking, which encourages his readers to think outside of the norms to analyze what their definition of race is. He argues that if one rejects the existence of racism, which is the idea that there are distinctions of our species, then that person cannot adhere to the fact that there are hereditary differentiations such as superior or inferior ethnicities. That individual insinuates that we are equal in all racial related aspects, but that is not the case in our current environment.

If one does not look Caucasian and are believed to be seen as different or an alien, then it is more difficult to claim that one is truly an American native. Chang-Rae Lee points out that if one does not look like a typical white American, people use different criteria to judge whether or not one is truly an American Native. That criterion is nativity of language. Since America was made upon immigration, many people in this country consists of different cultural backgrounds and races. The collective language of America buttresses the common ground among its native people. Therefore nativity of language is a set criterion of determining a person’s “native-ness” of a certain place. Native Speaker gives the reader a perspective on the extent of what immigrants go through in order to be accepted or claimed as a native of America through language and suppressing cultural identity. Chang-Rae Lee demonstrates what Asian Americans experience in order to be deemed as a native of America and to fit and have a place in American society. Chang-Rae Lee uses the themes of language and identity throughout the novel as he impressively exemplifies the experiences that Asian Americans undergo as an immigrant in the land of the free.

Even though there are set values that are universally known to the public, people do not always follow those values within their groups. However, these people have to act in conformity and abide by the values in public. Although everyone assumes that “imagined communities” contain a common culture, in reality, they really do not due to the fact that there are many body of ideas and practices that are not shared. Many languages are spoken and countless number of religions are practiced in various countries, so these make the “common culture” idea a misconception among citizens of different countries. For example, people tend to think that America consists of culture that is common, but they do not know if the beliefs, values, and practices are universally shared by all Americans. Nonetheless, there was a time when a dominant culture in the United States actually existed. It was during when the religion of Christianity was prominent and when many countries in Europe spoke the English language. It should be known that black Americans, Chinese-Americans, and white Americans have a common culture because of everything they do and do not share. From the common culture would arise the social identity, which can cause problems in diversity. Diversity can be an issue because of the ignorance of all the contrasting values. These issues arise because racial and ethnic identities are compared to one another and both can also relate to genders and sexualities. Nevermore, distinct genders and sexualities often live together now with the same knowledge and values and can still grow into opposite racial identities. Ethnic identities are so different since they are created in family and community life and people want the solidarity from being unique to one

This book discusses how minorities deal with contrasting identities. The author’s main claim is that young Asian American are able to follow the mainstream consciously while keeping other identities, constructing a “lived hybridity”. One of the author’s claims is that Asian American claim different identity expressions according to different contexts, such as in the home, in workplaces and in civil society. In addition, the author argues that because of these Asian Americans’ ability to blur the group boundaries, they could both resist and support conventional social notions. The author made his study by interviewing seventy second-generation professionals, including both Korean American and Indian American who are college-educated and full-time

The “melting pot” culture refers to people from various cultures coming together to create a new unique culture. (Lorenzo, 2000) In other words, these cultures have ‘melted’ together in a ‘pot’. For example, Chinese, Koreans, Germans and more cultures blended in together to create a whole new American culture. They are not Chinese-Americans, Korean-Americans or German-Americans anymore but just Americans. On the other hand, “salad bowl” culture refers to immigrants who do not lose the aspects of their cultures. . (Lorenzo, 2000) To put it in another way, you can still clearly see the different ‘ingredients’ in a ‘salad bowl’. As a contrast to the melting pot theory’s example, Chinese-Americans, Korean-Americans and German-Americans will still keep the unique traits of their cultures while living together in the country. America has been traditionally referred to as a ‘melting pot’, but recently; there are people who argue that ‘salad bowl’ will be a better description of America’s society today.