My Life After The United States

As a kid my grandparents’ description of the United States never ceased to amaze me. The way they described American schools looks, platform, and libraries made me envious. I always wondered to myself “why are we not like them? Why is Iraq so undeveloped?” now I detect incontrovertibly clearly that all the lines point at the same reason, students in Iraq avoid studying, learning, and reading. However, they are not entirely to be blamed, the educational system is wrong doer.

Throughout my years in my white neighborhood I grew up as an equal among my classmates. My peers had never teased me; in fact, the incident with those older boys was the only act of prejudice I have ever experienced. Classmates were very tolerant, and so was I. Forced by circumstance, I accepted living among all white people and they with me. They became familiar with the only Asian girl in the school, and the racial issue disappeared. I had friends and my ethnic background was not a problem. They saw my personality and saw me. I was an American.

Since coming to America, I have moved to an ample amount of places because my father’s job concerns. I changed school frequently and in each new school I was never greeted with a warm welcome. With one glance my classmates saw I was different from them. I was often bullied and teased because of my racial difference from my classmates, from these experiences I became a quiet and docile girl. This way I thought I would not get in anyone’s way. I had closed up in the world in front of me; I never expressed my own opinions and always agreed with the majority. However secretly inside of me, I was frustrated not being able to express myself and yet I was unable to change. I craved to be what I was in the inside to be on the outside. Still by

“I hate your Arabic!” I snarled in my broken English. My mother stared at me in confusion while I seethed about my heritage internally. For whatever reason, this toxic state of mind stuck with me through my elementary-school years. I promised myself that I would strive to become like everyone else and slowly began to erase my Lebanese culture from my mannerisms.

I am a U.S. born citizen. My parents moved to the United States in 1984 without knowing anything about this country. Looking for a fresh start and new opportunities, my parents settled in Houston. With hardly knowing any English, my parents knew this was the place to make dreams become a reality. Luckily, I had older siblings to look up to whenever I needed help. Like Lahiri, I was trapped in between two different cultures while I was growing up. At home, I only spoke Spanish, but in school it was English. My habits and customs were different than others. Life as an immigrant’s offspring can be very difficult. As I grew older, I allowed myself to open my eyes and see the beauty of being an American from Hispanic descent.

As an Arab immigrant who was raised in the United States since he was seven years old, who lived in Michigan seeing Arabs everyday and never felt like he was in a foreign country; and moving to NYC in 2015, changed the whole style of my life. NYC the tremendous city that I couldn’t find the people that I knew and that I understood nor those that understands me because of our massive cultural differences, and believes. The biggest problem is when I started school in NYC. The school system was different because in NYC they had regents, also their credit requirements were different, for that I was behind in credits and didn’t know what was the regents. Also, I came to school almost at the end of the First marking period of the second semester of freshman year.

After September 11, 2001 I’ve had trouble finding what makes me more angry; the way the authorities handled the hurricane of Katrina or the way the Arabs were treated. I have herd countless stories related to the 9/11 attack and until today I see the way that has affected the lives of many. Through Eggers story, I was able to comprehend more about the tragedy in New Orleans and even though I thought I already knew about the aftermath that Katrina brought, Eggers grabbed my attention by introducing me to the story of a Syrian-American middle aged man named Abdulrahman Zeitoun. He was a father of four, married to an American wife Kathy and owned a

I graduated high school from Los Angeles Technology Center. My teacher thought I was going to drop out for being the first generation of immigrants enrolled in high school. They assumed my last stop of education would be attending continuation school. I was receiving many negative comments mostly stereotypes from my teacher, classmates and administrators. I did not know how to deal with it and had no psychological help. My counselor told me there was no point in being in continuation school. My classmates would tell me I was going to have a lot of kids and live on welfare. Negative comments like these brought my self esteem down. I was able to prove them wrong and graduated high school and said the pledge of allegiance.

I came into this country as a refugee from a civil war happening in my country at the young age of 1 1/2, so I've practically lived here in the U.S all my life. Unfortunately, a lot of people believed because I shared the identity of a refugee that I was somehow unintelligent. So when I was put into an ELL class in the third grade because my appearance and identity was the same as the other kids in ELL and not because of my English capabilities, I was "othered". When the teachers eventually tested us, which they should've in the beginning, they were surprised on how well I did. They were surprised that somehow someone who's been living in the U.S for so long and has been doing just fine in class leading up to now did so well on a test I was suppose to do poorly on. They told me specifically that I should be proud that I'm different from the rest of the ELL class, and that it was rare to find someone with my identity. What they didn't understand was what Tatum has brilliantly described in this article. The notion that it has to be an anomaly for someone different to share similar traits with the dominant group. I was taken out of the ELL class and put back into the one I was in previously. The thing that bothered me the most was that it took my mother to contact the teachers for them to test my abilities. I am almost positive there were more kids in the ELL class that were judged on their identities just like

I grew up in a family where my father was a doctor and my mother a homemaker, both immigrants from Pakistan hoping to achieve the American dream. Growing up in a white-dominant community and attending a high school with predominantly, white students and teachers, I was restricted in my growth and freedom. I was treated differently by my friends, peers and faculty members as I tried to acclimate to the American culture. My low social status, identity as a student in my high school was due to my race and gender. My race, defined by my phenotypic traits, compelled my peers and teachers to treat me differently, because of association with an inferior race. Despite being born in America, my foreign looks and association with another country, led me to be captured by the chains of racial profiling. My family, my low-social status in a White-dominated institution and my membership in primary groups were all pivotal aspects that have allowed me to attend UC Davis, where I plan to combat the low expectations of my Pakistani race.

I was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and live in the U.S. I went to Lowell High School and took all ESL because I didn’t know much about English. In order to succeed, I started to read and speak more English than my first language, yet I speak Khmer at home because my parent doesn 't want me to lose my native language. In America, there are a lot of immigrants that are trying to come and to get a better opportunity. According to Joel Swerdlow, in “Changing America,” “before 1965 more than three-quarters of all immigrants to the U.S. came from Europe, owing largely to quotas that favored northern Europeans.” (313). In 1965 Congress removed those quotas, and since then more than 60 percent of immigrants have come from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Latin America. However, do children of immigrants often feel they must lose their cultural identity in order to be American? Children of immigrants often feel they must lose their cultural identity because they are changing their own culture identity regarding three topics: Language, Dress, and Behavior.

My father is Mexican, and my mother is White. I was born in California, however, when was 4 yrs. old we moved to Mexico. We did not returned to the United States till I turned 15 yrs. old. Although my first language was English, once I moved to Mexico, I became fluent in Spanish. Life coming back to America was hard, I did understand English perfectly since my mother always spoke to us in English, however, and I could no longer speak it. I was placed in ELL classes, and although I was very smart in many subjects, because I did not speak English, I was placed in easy classes, where we did nothing. They focus so much on learning the language that they fail to teach you. I survived; however, I knew the other classmates looked down at us. They would not speak to us, and they will make rude racial comments when referring to any of us.

As I read through the three stages that a person takes as they transition through cultural “defiance”, I couldn't help to think about my own experience with this. I have traveled through 39 countries, and lived in a total of four different countries. I currently live in Casablanca, Morocco, and I have lived in both Brazil and the Dominican Republic. Of course, I was born and raised in the United States. My parents were both born in the United States, but my mother's ethnic background is Danish and German, and my father's ethnic background is Lebanese. His parents both immigrated to the United States from Lebanon. My father's parents were Muslim, but after they died, my father

As a member of Jewish family, I grow up with Muslim and Christian friends in Hatay, Turkey. Back then, it was an unusual situation for country like Turkey, maybe still is. However, I never felt left out due to my race or religion at there. In my hometown, racism is not an issue to talk about. It is same for the most part of Turkey. Unfortunately, when I came to US I felt discriminated in my life for the first time. After long process of getting visa, having weird problems at the airport, overpriced apartment (just for international student), etc. All of these are simple examples of discrimination from my life in

The country of Syria and its culture is vital information for U.S military. It is important as a military to attempt to make a connection and understanding of a countries culture. Especially when considered for future military operations. It is to the benefit of the military to understand the overall culture. In order to make informed decisions that would not detract from the military’s goal. This would also aid in not disrupting or blocking the population’s daily habits.