Native Americans And The American Culture

Through the personal stories of his hair, love life, and behavior, Liu is able to show the effects of his assimilation. The second section deals with Liu’s struggles to conform to white stereotypes as an Asian American. With his personal anecdotes, he establishes himself as a more credible source to speak on the subject of assimilation. The second section uses narration to provide evidence about Liu’s definition of assimilation.

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

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.

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)

What would America look like if there had not been any native people living in America in the beginning? How would life have been different for the first settlers when they arrived to the new land? Would our lives today be different if the English, French, and Spanish colonists were never greeted by native people? These are some general questions that can be thought about when considering the idea of no native inhabitants living in America when the first settlers arrived. The article written by James Axtell, "Colonial America without the Indians: Counterfactual Reflection," portrays a good avenue of ideas on how the Indians actually contributed to the lives of the first settlers. Essentially,

As the immigrant population currently projected to overtake latinxs and hispanics as largest group of residents in the United States of America, Asian Americans have shown their will to survive in a way that many groups have not, and that is by banding together in order to achieve the life they deserve. Taking the overgeneralization of pan-ethnicity and using it as a device for increased numbers and support for the causes of a group of people who otherwise may not have much to do with each other, is a testament to how vulnerable they must have felt as well as how successful they have managed to be many aspects of progress. What I have gained from this course is the understanding that at the root of ethnic studies and the Asian American community is the “for us, by us” sentiment that contributed to the blurred lines between the different part of their communities as social, political and cultural, structures, collectives and groups which came out of an obligation and necessity to protect those immigrants and their future generations from a country which has always pushed European superiority in all aspects of society.

When starting this class I personally did not have a very detailed understanding of what or who indigenous people were, what made them important, and how they helped to shape what is now American history. To think that when settlers first came to the new land native americans made up one hundred percent of the population but now are roughly only one percent of the total population is very disappointing to see. This decline of population was due to many different factors such as, territorial conflicts, war, disease, and being forced to re-settle. When resettling, the journey alone that the native American had to take caused a huge decrease in population. Any population that is still here today is comprised of federally designed reservations. Although it is said that Hawaii and Alaska are two sates that have still refused to put in place any policies with Native Americans that seek out the rights to restrict them. I have learned that many native tribes that were geographically similar, often times came together to form nations, as well as confederacies. With these tribes being so similar yet so different, geographically and with the language, it often times lead to unity or division within these native communities, before the arrival of new settlers. With these differences we saw how each tribe played a part in the history of new settlers in the states as they each contributed something different to our history. This fact however gets looked over a lot of the time,

Throughout the semester we have learned that Asian Americans have gone through many hurdles and roadblocks in order to establish an identity for themselves. Although these social stereotypes have been established by other people, Asians didn’t allow this to define who they were as people. Either its projected by films, events or social media, we are able to see Asian Americans taking a stand with one another. Through popular Asian American Culture such as Beauty Pageants and films like Saving Face, we are able to see Asian Americans asserting their power by embracing their social identities. Through Beauty Pageants we are able to see Asian women truly embracing their ethnicity and Gender.

What is Native American? Does one want to know this based on ancestry, beliefs, civilization, culture, customs, ethnicity, heritage, history, humanities, legality, philosophy, principles, race, religion, spirit, thoughts, traditions, values, or other? The Webster’ dictionary defines Native American as a member of any of the indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere; especially: a Native American of North America and especially the United States This still leaves a very ambiguous answer.

Kristen Lee questions, “For my appearance, people assume I am Asian, but how could a quarter measurement define who I am?” Kristen Lee feels as if her Asian background shouldn’t restrict what her interests are, and it shouldn’t be the spotlight defining who she is as a person. She feels that not only her culture defines her, but also her personality and interest. It can also be seen again in the story “What is Cultural Identity?” The author writes, “We all have unique identities that we develop within our cultures, but these identities are not fixed or static.

Eric Liu grew up doubting his own identity. Early on he had trouble dealing with the problems of being an Asian-American. Growing up in a white suburban neighborhood Liu constantly felt out of place in. The suburbs that he grew up in caused him to struggle with his individuality. Who and what was he? How did he fit in the “big picture” as an American? He grew up with a family that allowed him to choose what he wanted to be never forcing any culture on him. Because of this freedom to choose, Eric in turn could not figure out for himself how he should act in a modern United States society as a minority. Liu’s group of collective essay’s deals with the entire process of what it means to be

Dominant white racial frames have led Asian minorities to follow outlines that they have been racially attached to. Americans have labeled Asian Americans as the “model minority” that other minorities should look up to in order to have successful futures. Thus, this title has led other Americans to either discourage themselves because they are not Asian, or to better themselves in order to fit the Asian American criteria through rigorous schoolwork.

The word indigenous derives from a latin root which is connected with birth, reproduction, and death. It has the same meaning as the word native but, in many parts of the world because it carries too many negative associations.”Referring to indigenous peoples in the twenty-first century is not the same as describing them a hundred years ago, and it will be different a hundred years into the future: neither they nor their situation will be the same.” (locations 262-264) No peoples today live the life that our ancestors did one hundred years ago. All societies are constantly advancing wether the people live in a world full of technology or have live a nomadic lifestyle. Time is a train that doesn't stop and, people are constantly improving their

Kim and Volpp’s concept of culture tied into the relationality of excess vs. normative and model immigrant vs. menace and foreign can be deconstructed and subverted by rejecting the White dominant lens upon which these binaries are formed. On the other hand, Espiritu’s concept of rejecting the “assimilationist and plurastic” school of thought which divides the immigrant’s identity into bipolar binaries of assimilation or nativism. Even so, Espiritu still notes the uneasy relationships and costs for the second generation Filipinos of her studies which can apply to many other Asian American immigrants. These emerging strategies for transforming cultural identity do not resolve individual needs to authenticate themselves within a dominant White culture which already has its place. There are social costs to being different which brings cultural voids. There are types of inclusions and domains that can be charged upon individuals for being too one sided such as being to “Filipino” or too “American”. Moments where Asian Americans are trying to forge their identity are the moments where they may use the essentialist viewpoint to ostracize themselves and tethered between their own sense of polarized

Immigration brings uncertainty, tensions between the past and present, and alterations in identity due to acculturation as shown through Leon and other characters in Bone. In the psychological study, “The Meaning of ‘Being Chinese’ and ‘Being American’: Variation among Chinese American Young Adults,” the correlation between the Chinese immigrating to the United States abridging Chinese and American cultures varied based on their age of immigration and the duration of their time in the United States, demonstrating that immigration provides a multifaceted experience for each individual. Chinese immigrants who immigrated over the age of twelve, like Mah and Leon, present an anchored identity as Chinese, but have to adapt through consciously engaging in American culture to survive. Leon distances himself from his frustrations of living in America by going out to sea, evading Chinatown- a reminder of Ona’s death-, and by distracting himself in project inventions without any intentions of completing them. Then, Mah immerses herself in work and relationships, including her affair with Tommie Ham and her over involvement in her daughters’ lives. Chinese immigrants who immigrated under the age of twelve, like Leila, are placed in the position of mediating between Chinese and American cultures; they experience less certainty on which culture to identify with and often have to consciously act to become a part of either. In her conversation with Nina, Leila reflects on how Nina’s tour