As kids grow up into adults, they go from learning arithmetic, alphabet, and handwriting in elementary schools to learning the principles of the science, social science, humanities, and arts in colleges, school education always performs a role to teach students the comprehensive knowledge and develop their skills and desires for lifelong learning. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, my friend Tiana is an Africa-American graduated from New York University (NYU) with a major in Gender and Sexuality Studies in 2012. Her four years of studying race, gender, and sexuality in American history gave her a profound understanding of minority groups and feminism and prepared her to be a responsible woman who holds a deep respect for racial differences and works for women’s rights. …show more content…
Born in a traditional Chinese family, Ming began to know about people of backgrounds different than him after he came to the U.S. in 2014. What he learned and experienced in CSUEB had transformed him from a boy having a racial stereotype and religious prejudice to a man who shows high respect for cultural diversity. By making a formal interview with Tiana and Ming, I learned that school education has significant influences on personal growth and development because it improves students’ abilities to demonstrate knowledge of the history, race, and gender in American context and prepares them to be a person who has abilities to respond to diverse perspectives linked to cultural identities, such as race, gender, and
One’s identity has the ability to play a central role in one’s schooling experience and in return, affect the way they perceive the world around them. Growing up in an Asian household located in a predominately Asian American neighborhood located in the San Gabriel Valley, I always identified myself strongly to my race and took pride in being a first generation Asian American child. Race has definitely affected my schooling experience in many different ways, both positively and negatively. In addition, there were a variety of other aspects such as stereotypical gender roles and socioeconomic class status which factored into the way I learned in the U.S. education system. In this paper, I will examine how race, class, and gender played a big role throughout my schooling experience.
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Ed. By Patricia Hill Collins. (New York: Routledge, 2000. ii, 336 pp. Cloth, $128.28, ISBN 0-415-92483-9. Paper, $26.21, 0-415-92484-7.)
In America, we are told that it is the land where everything and anything is possible. For many years, it wasn’t like that for African American. With many hard work, strength, and courage African American manage to earn the right to an education. To the African American community education became more of a need than a want. We’ve learn that education is such a powerful asset that with it you are unstoppable. You can do so much if you put your time and energy to it. Having an education to African American is the one hope for a brighter and better
Asians are one of fastest growing minority groups in America today. During this century, various factors at home and abroad have caused people from Asia to immigrate to the United States for better or for worse. Due to these factors, Americans and American teachers, in particular, need to educate themselves and become aware of the Asian American students’ needs in terms of success and happiness. Before beginning my research, I felt I had an easy subject: studying Asian Americans in relation to their education in public schools. How simple! Everyone knows they are smart, hard working, driven to succeed in spite of their nerdish, geeky, non-athletic, broken-English stereotype. Of course they are
Many new arrivals still struggle to survive and often Chinese Americans still encounter suspicion and hostility. Chinese Americans have achieved great success and now, like so many others, they are stitching together a new American identity. As Michelle Ling, a young Chinese American, tells Bill Moyers in Program 3, “I get to compose my life one piece at a time, however I feel like it. Not to say that it’s not difficult and that there isn’t challenge all the time, but more than material wealth, you get to choose what you are, who you are.” (www.pbs.org)
For generations African Americans have been disadvantaged in America and effects of these injustices have made a lasting impression. Education is one of the leading problems in the black community. Though there have many reforms in education over the years, racial injustices still exist because no attention in placed on how legislature affects people of color. I was raised in a middle-class family of educators. My entire life I’ve been told to “stay in school, get an education, and work hard so that you can beat the system.” Recognizing the structural forces in my life has helped me understand my place in society. Being able to “understand everyday life, not through personal circumstances but through the broader historical forces that
“Black students were expelled at three times the rate of white students.” (Steven Hsieh, 2014) Until now, we are still finding unequal treatment from school in American Society from different aspects, such as school discipline, early learning, college readiness and teacher equity. However, education is more than learning from books. Education enables individuals potential to utilize human mind and open doors of opportunities to obtain knowledge. But the US educational system doesn’t serve the majority of children properly and gaps remain between white and black students. What’s more, nowadays, a lot of schools only treat education as a curriculum and test scores; ignoring the stimulus of curiosity. Therefore, “Between the World and Me” is a book written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who weaves his own personal, historical, and intellectual development into his ruminations on how to live in a black body in America. In this book, Coates writes about education and pleasures of his own educational experience in Howard University. Although bad education hides the truth and restricts students’ ideas, education also contains pleasures, which broaden people’s mind, help people build their own thoughts, and prevent people from prison. As a result, there are more pleasures in American education that positively impact on black body than dangers.
To some people this is not be viewed as a stereotype due to the fact it is not instantly perceived as “negative”; for those readers who delve in deeper, this stereotype outlines the educational daily hidden pressure of people from Chinese descent whom do not fit this “positive” stereotype. Every day, especially in American society, classmates look to their Asian counterparts to provide the answers to questions they do not know in every subject they take. Nonetheless, this ridiculous assumption hurts the Asian students that do not feel comfortable with their intellectual abilities. Placing Asian students as the “model student” excludes the students who actually have problems and need help that other classmates are reluctant to give the students simply because their classmates do not view helping their struggling Asian classmates as an actual necessity. By “poking” fun and bringing into light both Asian stereotypes, Yang enforces view that stereotypes are in use today.
What does it mean to be labeled “socially-deviant” and have negative connotations associated with your race, gender, and your sexuality during your most crucial developmental years? I believe that our history in this country as women of color, rather we are aware of it or not, greatly informs our present and our future. Drawing from sociology and history scholars like Thomas Sugrue, Antero Pietila, John Rury and Richard Rodriguez, I want to explore how U.S. societal structures have shaped the school experiences of African-American and Latina girls living in urban city centers. Also pulling from sociologists that pioneered concepts of Black feminism (Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, and Audre Lorde), Latinx feminism (Julia Alvarez and Alida Nugent) and through qualitative field research, I also plan on uncovering how Black and Latina female students have shaped their own identities and cultural notions of femininity. Through further exploration of the respectability politics of sexuality and racial constructs of femininity, I hope to uncover implicit and explicit biases educators/school administrators have about Black and Latina girls and how that impacts their relationship to school and/or educational attainment. Like the works of Lisa Delpit and Signithia Fordham, I want to capture how the biases educators,
The focus of our group project is on Chinese Americans. We studied various aspects of their lives and the preservation of their culture in America. The Chinese American population is continually growing. In fact, in 1990, they were the largest group of Asians in the United States (Min 58). But living in America and adjusting to a new way of life is not easy. Many Chinese Americans have faced and continue to face much conflict between their Chinese and American identities. But many times, as they adapt to this new life, they are also able to preserve their Chinese culture and identity through various ways. We studied these things through the viewing of a movie called Joy Luck Club,
Because America is such a diverse country, there are many differences between cultures of various immigrant groups. Members of each culture, have their own beliefs and values regarding what they think is right. The cultural diversity allows for each person to have a different view of things. Amy Chua’s essay “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” she describes her way of parenting her two daughters following Chinese values about education. She explains how Western parents are much more lenient than Chinese parents with their children and education. Chua gives examples of how she raised her daughter Lulu and Sophia which lead them to achieve success. She makes comparisons between Western and Chinese parenting styles throughout the essay and concludes that both types of parents want the best for their children, but just approach parenting it in different ways. In the article, “Chinese vs Western Mothers: Q&A with Amy Chua,” Amy Chua is interviewed by Belinda Luscombe where she clarifies how her Chinese method of parenting did not hurt her children the way many readers thought it did. Chua explains that her relationship with her two daughters is very strong and believes there are many effective ways of parenting in addition to the Chinese approach. Chua’s essay shows the Chinese immigrant approach to parenting and gives insight into why so many children of Chinese parents are so successful. Discussing the cultural differences shows the risk of stereotyping groups where feelings
Elizabeth Wong is a Chinese-American playwright who wrote “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl”. In her essay, she describes her resentment of her Chinese roots and her protest against her parents who want her to learn and appreciate her heritage and culture. Her essay exposes the pressure that society places on immigrant children to fit into the dominant culture. The proposed solutions to fixing this problem is thinking and implementing long term plans. I make the argument that his ethical problem of society placing such a heavy burden on immigrant children to fit into the dominate culture can be solved with the implementation of multicultural classes, language classes, additional counselors and child psychologists in public schools.
As African-American women address social issues that are important to their life experiences, such as class and race, instead to acknowledge “common oppression” of gender inequality, they are often criticized by “white bourgeois feminists” (hooks, 2000). Their ability to gain any form of equality within society is tarnished by such groups as they develop a “fear of encountering racism” from simply joining this movement (hooks, 2000). As white men, black men, and white women oppress them, their issues are often ignored due to reoccurring stereotypes and myths that claim black women are strong, independent, and “superhuman” (hooks, 2000). It becomes extremely difficult to seek liberation and equity within a “racist, sexist, and classist” society, as their gender and race causes them to be at the “bottom of the occupational ladder” and “social status” (hooks, 2000, pg. 16). As black women are perceived to demonstrate strength and dynamic qualities as white women perpetrate the image of being
I was adopted from China when I was six months old. Throughout my childhood, I was always aware that I was “different,” but I did not others to recognize it. I craved to blend in with my peers and to not bring attention to the fact that I was Asian, that I was different. I struggled with accepting that aspect of myself, and it was not until college did I truly learn to appreciate and discover what being Asian means for me. Through certain courses I had the privilege to take while in college and different research activities looking at microaggressions on Predominately White Institutions, I developed a passion for the importance of multiculturalism. I understood the value of how society in the United States still needs to continue to engage in dialogue with one another in order to elicit change. Talking about race is uncomfortable, but it is important to learn from people’s experiences and to have conversations with one
It had taken me a while to realize that the students I had been in a group with were new to college and the United States. These students were under a lot of pressure to succeed and do well for their country, family, and themselves. I did not know what sort of rigorous testing they had undergone to be able to study in America, or what sort of scholarships they may have had to go through to be at UMKC. I knew that in Chinese culture education was highly valued, but that was about the extent of knowledge I had known about their culture. I had not had the chance to learn much