Personal Experience: Stereotypical Chinese Immigrants

Stories and stereotypes make many people want to change themselves negatively and assimilate just to fit in with society. As time passes, society’s stereotypes for how people of each race should be, which race is more dominant than others, and which race you should be, all play a role in impacting someone’s self-esteem and their insecurities. This is portrayed through Jin Wang, a main character in Gene Luen Yang’s “American Born Chinese” when Jin Wang thinks his crush, Amelia, he instantly becomes happy. But then he thinks about Greg and Amelia together and gets mad. He finally zooms into Greg’s blond hair. The next day he goes to school with the same hairstyle. The hair symbolizes Greg’s all American identity because the stereotypical American is portrayed with blond hair and blue eyes. To Jin Wang, this hair symbolizes what he wants to be, so he changed his hair to an “American” hairstyle to get Amelia to like him. Due to stereotypes about how Americans are suppose to look like, Jin Wang feels insecure about himself and wants to change his identity and himself as well to assimilate into American culture and stereotypes. These stereotypes and the Anti-Asian stereotypes impact Jin Wang greatly and make him hate himself as well as his background and where he came from because he believes that in order to be AMerica, you have to be white. Another way that this is portrayed is from a personal experience I had as a kid. Growing up as an Asian kid in America, I didn’t really know

Over the past thousand years or so, many immigrants have had countless complications and obstacles while finding their home here in the United States. Migrants tended to have a stigma or stereotype associated with their race, class, or culture. In no way did the United States make it “easy” or “free” whenever the mass of people came to the country. The experiences between the immigration groups of the Chinese, Irish, and Germans over the years show that they have overcome prejudice through their work.

The Chinese Experience records the history of the Chinese in the United States. The three-part documentary shows how the first arrivals from China, their descendants, and recent immigrants have “become American.” It is a story about identity and belonging that is relative to all Americans. The documentary is divided into three programs, each with a focus on a particular time in history. Program 1 describes the first arrivals from China, beginning in the early 1800’s and ending in 1882, the year Congress passed the first Chinese exclusion act. Program 2, which details the years of exclusion and the way they shaped and distorted Chinese American

My research experience so far has been quite smooth, I have been able to read and uncover a variety of sources that contain valuable information about the Chinese immigrants of the late 1800s. More importantly, the sources that I have found are all different; some of my sources are articles, others are flyers, and I even found political cartoons. Learning form a diverse selection of sources has allowed to learn about the situation through different lenses. I have not experienced any frustration through my research, but I am slightly annoyed at the lack of memorial and remembrance for a massive part of U.S. history, especially due to the inhumane treatment of a large groups of people. Toronto has a significantly large memorial for the Chinese

Millions of immigrants over the previous centuries have shaped the United States of America into what it is today. America is known as a “melting pot”, a multicultural country that welcomes and is home to an array of every ethnic and cultural background imaginable. We are a place of opportunity, offering homes and jobs and new economic gains to anyone who should want it. However, America was not always such a “come one, come all” kind of country. The large numbers of immigrants that came during the nineteenth century angered many of the American natives and lead to them to blame the lack of jobs and low wages on the immigrants, especially the Asian communities. This resentment lead to the discrimination and legal exclusion of immigrants,

In many cases throughout America’s history immigrants have settled here for many different reasons. In conclusion these reasons were known as push and pull factors. Push factors are factors that repel migrants from their country. And pull factors are factors that attract migrants to move. In my main immigrant group which is the Chinese, there were several push and pull factors that I will be mentioning. First, some of the push factors that were included in my group were the fact that there were a lot of disasters. For example there was draught, poverty, a famine, and floods were also included in these disasters. To state these factors more specifically, it was around the 1840s and 1850s when

In the early 20th century, Chinese and Japanese characters were often pictured as outsiders and dangerous villains. They and other Asian Americans were stereotyped as “inscrutable” and poor at speaking English. Between 1900 and 1930, vicious images of forward, buck-toothed “Japs” exploded across the U.S. media. In widely circulated “Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy,” journalist Wallace Irwin articulated and stimulated various anti-Japanese stereotypes, including a mode of speech mocked with phrases such as “so sorry, please” (with l often replacing r, and vice versa). White leaders often spoke of the alleged immorality of Japanese Americans, sometimes using the ape-like imagery applied earlier to Irish or African

“America the land of opportunity, to all” has always been a driving force for many people from poor, undeveloped societies far away from America. This simple saying has brought over millions and millions of people from they’re native countries, leaving behind families and friends. Some never to return. Once in America, reality sets in for most of these groups as that suffer thought unequal treatment, racism and discrimination. One such group involved similar treatments were the Chinese- Americans, in the documentary “Becoming American- the Chinese Experience” we are given a first hand looks and descriptions of the hate that Chinese- American suffered in America. This paper will discuss these events including the documentary and class notes, further it will also describe the difference treatment that Chinese- American face in present day compared to the past.

The influences that contributed to the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 was nativism and racial prejudice against Chinese immigrants.

After the first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States in the early 1840s during the California Gold Rush, many Chinese people continued to travel across the Pacific, escaping poor conditions in China with hopes and ambitions for a better life in America. Many more Chinese immigrants began arriving into the 1860s on the Pacific coast for work in other areas such as the railroad industry. The immigrants noticed an increasing demand for their labor because of their readiness to work for low wages. Many of those who arrived did not plan to stay long, and therefore there was no push for their naturalization. The immigrants left a country with thousands of years of a “decaying feudal system,” corruption, a growing

Around the mid 1800’s we started to see the movement of the Chinese immigrants in the pacific-coast of the united states, more specifically in California. They laid railroad tracks in the west coast and also serviced in mining during the California gold rush. You start to see the success of the Chinese immigrants which encouraged the poor Chinese to come to America. The Chinese started to spread and settle in Oregon as well as in Washington in the 1860’s providing labor for the state’s mines and salmon canneries and also setting up the Northern Pacific Railroad which connected Lake Superior to Tacoma, Washington and also helped build the Seattle to Newcastle railroad.(cite #2) These immigrants were very industrious, willing to work long hours

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.

The beginning of Chinese immigration to the United States first started in the 19th century, the political unrest and economic pressures in China and the Gold Rush era in California prompted thousands of Chinese immigrants to migrate to the United States to search for temporary work, and to seek for the dreams of gold in the 1850s. Many of them arrived in America hoping to acquired wealth to send money back to support their families and hoping to return back to their home after a few years with wealth, but some of them entered the United States for freedom.

During the 18th to 20th century, the Chinese people faced many obstacles. Many would come in to America seeking education, work, and to get away from the famine. When they came, there got more than they bargained for. Abundant of Chinese immigrants came to American in three different time periods. They first came in 1849-1882 when they heard of the gold being found in California. The second wave of Chinese immigrants came in 1882-1965. And the last one would be in 1965 to now, present day.

American Born Chinese Stereotype Essay The most common stereotypes today are dumb blonde, geek, nerd, smart asian, fat american, terrorist. These insults are used everyday, as it is a way for society to label people for being different from everyone else. Stereotypes are used in American Born Chinese to show how stereotypes are used to negatively group people, to depict how others bully those who are different, and are used to show how stereotypes affect those they are directed towards and those around them in a negative way.