My Korean Adoption

The intersection of dominant ideologies of race, class, and gender are important in shaping my social location and experiences. By exercising my sociological imagination (Mills, 1959), I will argue how my social location as an Asian American woman with a working class background has worked separately and together to influence how I behave, how others treat and view me, and how I understand the world. The sociological imagination has allowed me to understand my own “biography”, or life experiences by understanding the “history”, or larger social structures in which I grew up in (Mills, 1959). First, I will describe my family’s demographic characteristics in relation to California and the United States to put my analysis into context. I

What this novel does not touch on is the harsh levels of discrimination that some Asian-American families faced during the 20th centuries, some people telling at them to go back to Vietnam, Korea, or wherever they came from, some refusing service, perhaps throwing them out for being different, similarly to how African-Americans were treated during that time, and similar to how some Muslims are being treated today. However, more insidious than moments of outright hostility, and maybe more powerful, are the constant weak reminders that you’re different, that you’re not one of them. The “sign at the Peking Express” (Ng 193), the “little boys on the playground, stretching their eyes to slits with their fingers” (Ng 193), you even “saw it when waitresses and policemen and bus drivers spoke slowly to you, in simple words, as if you might not understand” (Ng 193). All these tiny things, these little reminders that you’re not the same as everyone else around you, may have more impact on the people being discriminated against than blatant in-your-face

Everyone is raised within a culture with a set of customs and morals handed down by those generations before them. Most individual’s view and experience identity in different ways. During history, different ethnic groups have struggled with finding their place within society. In the mid-nineteen hundreds, African Americans faced a great deal of political and social discrimination based on the tone of their skin. After the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans no longer wanted to be identified by their African American lifestyle, so they began to practice African culture by taking on African hairdos, African-influenced clothing, and adopting African names. By turning away from their roots, many African Americans embraced a culture that was not inherited, thus putting behind the unique and significant characteristics

In the boiling pot of America most people have been asked “what are you?” when referring to one’s race or nationality. In the short story “Borders” by Thomas King he explores one of the many difficulties of living in a world that was stripped from his race. In a country that is as diverse as North America, culture and self-identity are hard to maintain. King’s short story “Borders” deals with a conflict that I have come to know well of. The mother in “Borders” is just in preserving her race and the background of her people. The mother manages to maintain her identity that many people lose from environmental pressure.

To be young and Asian in America is a special brand of torture. There is an unspoken dictum of silence that grips Asian youth, a denial of our place in popular culture. Asian youth walk in America not quite sure where we fit in-black children have a particular brotherhood, Hispanic children have a particular brotherhood, white children own everything else. We cannot lay claim to jazz or salsa or swing; we cannot say our ancestors fought for equality against an oppressive government or roamed the great hallways of power across the globe. We do not have a music, a common hero, a lexicon of slang. Asian youth experience personal diasporas every day.

I had no knowledge of the English language or American culture. I never knew any other culture past my hometown’s. A fish out of water, I struggled as a first grader to learn the language, assimilate into the different culture filled with people with different physical features. I felt

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.

At the turning point of the century came the rise of the industrial age in America, and with that, came the rise of multiculturalism. The promise of the money and jobs brought people from all over the world. Free-market enterprise had people enamored with “The American Dream,” the idea that freedom enabled every hard-working individual with the opportunity for prosperity in success. Because of this, no other nation has such a rich blend of cultures. However, with this culture of diversity one could claim makes America great, comes a series of convoluted identity politics. In the novel Covering: The Hidden Assault On Our Civil Rights, Kenji Yoshino talks about the dichotomy between the True Self and False Self, and the concept of covering,

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.

Between the World and Me has been called a book about race, but the author argues that race itself is a flawed, if anything, nothing more than a pretext for racism. Early in the book he writes, “Race, is the child of racism, not the father.” The idea of race has been so important in the history of America and in the self-identification of its people and racial designations have literally marked the difference between life and death in some instances. How does discrediting the idea of race as an immutable, unchangeable fact changes the way we look at our history? Ourselves? In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and the current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the

Sitting in a circle, most of those who were staring at me also looked like me – black hair, squinted eyes, and yellow skin. Not twenty minutes ago, I paced around the heart of a predominantly white college campus. Now, I was introducing myself to the members of Asian Students United (ASU). While I was never a part of ASU, I asked one of the organization’s executive board (eboard) members – Tien, who happened to a Facebook friend – if I could attend a couple of their meetings to conduct research on Asian American identity. He delightfully agreed. After all, from an outsider perspective, I would fit right in. At these meetings, I participated in many of their activities, which included making a quilt and participating in discussions. Yet, I was always observant and somewhat detached because this was all new to me, making me an observer-participant. This allowed me to observe a range of details; however, because I was so new, such details may have been unimportant to those whom I studied. On the other hand, my Vietnamese church was all too familiar. As a full participant in the church and a former participant in Youth for Christ (YFC), I was pressed to critically observe and dissect these interactions. While I still asked the group leader for a chance to observe YFC meetings, data from this second site may be more biased toward the way I have known people in this institution from prior years. As a tradeoff, though, being a participant-observer may have allowed me to note more

What is it like to be born in one country and then grow up in another where people speak a different language and follow different traditions? And is it easy to grow up in another country where members of the native country pressure one to be "one of their own"? If anyone wishes to find insightful and interesting answers to these questions, one should go no further than read Lac Su's I Love Yours Are for White People. In this book, Lac tells the story of his child- and adolescent-hood, growing up in "urban" Los Angeles as a Vietnamese living with a "traditional" Vietnamese family. As Lac demonstrates in the book, he once was between two worlds, sometimes unable to figure out who he was, and sometimes rejecting one or the other altogether. After going through difficult and painful experiences, Lac learns to embrace his ethnic identity. He realizes that he is a Vietnamese-American who belongs to both cultures. He learns to appreciate his Vietnamese background but also acknowledges that he is partly American because some Vietnamese habits are so uncommon for him.

Everyone is raised within a culture with a set of customs and morals handed down by those generations before them. Most individual’s view and experience identity in different ways. During history, different ethnic groups have struggled with finding their place within society. In the mid-nineteen hundreds, African Americans faced a great deal of political and social discrimination based on the tone of their skin. After the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans no longer wanted to be identified by their African American lifestyle, so they began to practice African culture by taking on African hairdos, African-influenced clothing, and adopting African names. By turning away from their roots, many African Americans embraced a

I introduced myself to Junseok was a from South Korea. I empathize with his struggle as a new student soon realizing how similar we were. Junseok struggled for stability and opportunity in his new home while I sought structure and friendship in the wake of my own migrant lifestyle. I learned that Junseok was asked to play for the varsity soccer team as a freshman something rarely even asked of sophomores his father had refused him the opportunity the leaving has done had more important commitments to his family in