Asians In The Library Video Analysis

Provided this, I began to notice as I would scroll through social media platforms, such as twitter, that non-Asians overly emphasized specific aspects of Asian society. For example, many would only recognize anime as strictly Japanese and dramatic shows as Korean dramas, when in reality every culture and race has dramatic television shows just as in the United States or Turkey. I often recognized this confusion of knowledge occurring often on twitter or Instagram. As very stereotypical and frankly racist remarks would be exposed by the supposed fans on specific people, or about specific shows where many people often saw nothing wrong with how they were being portrayed. While others commented about how all of Asians are the same others tried to explain how they actually live like. Therefore as I continued to explore

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

This video showed the viewpoints from people of mixed race. It focused on those that are Latino and Black. It can sometimes be a struggle to be Latino and Black. Some feel like they have to choose which race to identify with. They should be able to embrace both races and not be judged. The divide is really caused because of lack of understanding. If more people get to know one another then they will see that different races can identify and gain a connection.

He certainly wasn’t the only one: David Gandhi and Mohammed Ahsan and Park Jung-suk carried the same weight. They all carried the knowledge that they had a heritage to live up to, a culture of thousands of years of persisting through hardships. They carried the shame, as their immigrant parents did, of classmates mocking them by stretching out the edges of their eyes with their fingers, or asking the latest news about the last terrorist attack. Of course, there were some good-natured inquiries— for example, when Billy Condosa wanted to know what his girlfriend’s Chinese tattoo really meant or when Joel Bart asked for a Chinese restaurant recommendation. Jonathan Lam had grown used to all of these requests, whether they be for good or for mal-intent, and whenever a racially-insensitive joke was thrown around, if someone realized and hushed the others with a sharp glare and apologized to him, he would smile and say that he was used to taking worse insults from his siblings. Which was true to some extent and usually extracted him from a sticky racial situation. After all, he couldn’t risk losing all his family had gone through for a single punch, a single detention, a single stab in the image of the Chinese race in the eyes of the other students. He learned that sometimes it was better just to carry the shame.

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)

Wallace has a very colloquial style to his word choice and presentation of his speech. He has a unique way of making listeners feel comfortable and safe listening to him speak. He appears to talk to the listener’s as if they are having on a one-on-one conversation with each and every person listening. Wallace also works hard to present himself as an equal, no more righteous or smarter than anyone in the audience. He chooses to remind everyone not to “think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're “supposed to” think this way” (Wallace 12), but to offer advice and new insight into changing our perspective on the world. This comfortable word choice is a unique way for Wallace to make himself more relatable to the graduates and listeners in general.

The “Silent and Compliant” Asians in Popular Culture White Americans categorize Asian Americans as the model minority, and this is done to characterize and force them to fit their ideology of an inferior being (Sameer Pandya). The Model minority includes the stereotypes of acting as, “a geek, silent, compliant, and overall a smart child” (Sameer Pandya). Asian Americans are depicted as the “oriental,” also known as the “other” who are in “racial opposition” of a white American (Sameer Pandya, Robert G. Lee 2). The theoretical framework of Robert G. Lee’s “Model Minority” is depicted in the article the, “Spelling Bee” as children from an Asian origin are forced to conform into the Americanized expectation of the Model Minority. The “Model Minority”

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.

The video, " Asians in the Library" went vial in 2011 because of all the racist comments Alexandra Wallace, a former UCLA student, made about her Chinese school mates. First, she discussed how Asian parents "don't teach their kids to defend for themselves," saying that Asian students will have their huge family to come over in the weekend and buy their grocery, cook, and do laundry for them. Second, she stated that Asians have no "American manners," telling the audience her recent experience at the library, where the Asians are constantly on their phone. Besides making all these unfair statements towards Asian people, what really got people furious is how she brought up the Japan tsunami during that time. She stated, "And then it's

Asian-American students are often assumed to be the ones who finish on top academically. Due to the amount of high-ranking Asian-American students in schools throughout the United States, a cliché stereotype has been developed claiming all Asian students are “whiz kids.” The culture which Asian individuals practice differs by region however, majority of Asian individuals celebrate a different culture than mainstream Americans. I interviewed Susan, an Asian-American female who was born to an Asian mother, and an American father.

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.

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.

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.

     Asian Americans only make up a small percent of the American population. Even more significant is that this percentage live mostly on the west and east coasts of mainland United States and Hawaii; leaving the rest of the American population to most likely get their exposures to Asians through television and movies. However the exposure they have receive throughout the history of cinematography has been hardly flattering. Throughout the course of history Asians in film have been portrayed as evil or the "yellow peril" as described by others. If Asians are not being classified as evil in this picture then they are most likely the comic relief, with their lack of coordination or grasp of the English

Thanks to California Proposition 209 in 1996, which prohibits state institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity specifically in the areas of public employment and public education, Asian American enrollment rates in the University of California system remained stable at a rate of around 40 percent. In contrast, the percentage of Asian-Americans admitted to Harvard, and other Ivy League schools remains remarkably stable for the past 20 years at around 16 percent despite the increasing Asian American applicants (Washington Post). Apparently, AB 1726 is used as a backdoor way to overturn Proposition 209, which bans the affirmative action. Concerns have been rising among Chinese American communities that AB 1726 will be a threat to Chinese American’s struggle for social and economic equality. Also, AB 1726 is not the first act that attempts to reintroduce affirmative action in California. Senate Constitutional Amendment No.5(SCA 5) was proposed to eliminate Proposition 209’s ban on the use of race, sex, color and ethnicity in college admission in California admission system (California Legislative Information), but was withdrawn because of the fervent opposition from primarily Asian American communities. If SCA 5 is highway robbery, AB1726 is deception and inseparably linked to SCA 5. Instead of supporting overt racial discrimination, supporters who crave