Essay I am a Filipino Through the Eyes of an American Citizen

Asian Americans are a diverse group of people who are among the fastest growing minority groups in the United States. Despite their minority status, they often surpass Whites in America and do so while holding on to their cultural values regarding family, education, and success.

What does it mean to be American? It can be a "loaded" question this day and age, and the answer will vary depending on whom you ask. I am willing to bet that it would be hard to get a consensus even in a small group like our class. I suspect that's because the answer is shaped by many possible variables.

In reading a Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich you realize that history seems so much less complicated when you are the one standing back and reflecting on the past. You realize how easy it is to often forget that every single new idea, religion and war was a struggle that lasted generations upon generations. History is more than just a page or a story, its our account of the world. That goes to show how short life and history is, you realize that history is always repeating, war after war, peace then war. There are good and bad periods in history and its up to us to learn from them. In a way history is much like a human being it goes through stages, learns about life, and has inner struggles or wars about their ideas and their beliefs.

I am a girl with two heads. At home, I wear my Chinese head, in school I wear my English head. Being an Asian, or Chinese, as it is commonly referred to, my culture plays a key role in the development of who I am and what I do, my personal identity. An identity is the distinguishing character or personality of an individual. Parents are often one of the key factors of this culturally developed personal identity.

The air would always be humid and stuffy while riding the bus to school, and the slightest bump in the road would result in tossing up the kids like salad. The backseat would provide carriage for all the popular and tough kids shouting out at pedestrians on the street or flipping off a middle finger to the bus driver that would shout for them to calm down. I despised those kids in the back. They were the same people that made my life a living hell, while growing up and attending an American school.

The pain and the suffering, the oppression, and the exclusion all describe the history of Asia America. When they arrived to the United States, they become labeled as Asians. These Asians come from Japan, China, Korea, Laos, Thailand, and many other diverse countries in the Eastern hemisphere. These people wanted to escape from their impoverished lives as the West continued to infiltrate their motherland. They saw America as the promise land filled with opportunity to succeed in life. Yet due to the discrimination placed from society and continual unfair

“Mom, will I ever be treated as a regular person? When will I be like the others without people look at me in a strange way and make fun of me, when mom? When?” Those were the questions I did to my mom almost every day after getting home from school. Fourteen years ago that my parents brought me to this country offering a better life with better opportunities than where I was born. I was seven years old when came to the United States, but I still remember the happiness I felt when I first step in this country. Throughout the years, I have realize that not everything is easy and simple as I imagined. My parents worked in the fields because of the lack of a social security and not knowing how to speak English. Many Americans do not know how hard it is the life of an immigrant, they should have a consideration for us and not just blame us for the deviance of the United States.

Around the mid-19th to the 20th century, myriads of immigrants flocked to the U.S. seeking better job opportunities,or searching for religious freedom. U.S. citizens were fearful, envious, and willing to exclude immigrants who came to the US as they were viewed as an economic threat to the society. They believed that these immigrants were racially, morally and intellectually inferior to them and as such did not see or treat as their equals. These dysfunctions lead to severe and harsh treatment of immigrants. Historically, the three major immigrant groups that faced the most discrimination during this era were the Asians, German, and the Irish. American citizen’s fear of job secureness led to the resentment and discriminatory treatment towards Asian Immigrants. They believed that the majority of the Asian American immigrants were taking too many of their jobs. As such, the U.S. government decided that it would be necessary to restrict the amount of Asian Americans, in order to keep the U.S. citizens from being unemployed. The U.S. government passed numerous laws, banning Asian American immigrants from the United States. One distinct law that they passed was the 1922 Cable Act, this law “stripped a female citizen of citizenship, if she married an alien unable to become a citizen.”(Lutz 7).The law was basically passed to prevent Asian immigrants from obtaining citizenship by marrying a female U.S citizen.In fact, the government believed that female citizens that engaged in this

The migration of Puerto Ricans to the United States occurred in two major waves. The first wave was in the 1910s-1940s and the second wave was from the 1960s to the 1990s. Each wave of migrants brought new generations of Puerto Ricans to the United States. Both waves of migrants believed that they were going to live a better life in America and migrated to major cities such as New York City, Chicago, Hartford, etc. The early migrants looked for industrial jobs such as in cigar factories while the later migrants found agricultural work such as in tobacco fields. The communities in which they lived grew larger and larger due to chain migration and because of this, the need for politics evolved.

History is something that we all have knowledge of. It may be family history, or even your own but we all know of an experience that happened in the past. These experiences make us who we are, and they determine how we think. Not only that but they determine our emotions towards certain topics. Through characters in the book, "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, " written by Jamie Ford, we learn that American identity is based on ones history and if we want America to become a stronger more united place everyone’s history must be accepted.

The schools I went to before third grade had a strong Asian population. Asians were the majority; there were rarely any non-Asians in those schools. During that time, I was allowed to stay innocent and uncaring of what others thought of me. It was a pity those golden days couldn’t last longer. The school I transferred to for the remainder of my elementary education had an extremely low Asian rate. In fact, you could have listed all the Asians in the school with only one hand. With little to none Eastern Asians, my parents pushed me to work harder. Unbeknownst to them, they were trying to mold me into the stereotypical smart Asian. The changes were subtle at first since they

History is defined as the study of the science of humanity in the past. It's a broad subject that spans over countless people groups throughout the years that the world has been around. Even before the times we have written word history was still being made, and it is still extremely important. We tend to forget that in our average day to day lives we are still making history. That all over the globe everyone is taking part in what might be in a history book someday.

Today the Society is split into three separately minded groups. In no specific ordering, the first is determined to believe that any one person born in the United States is a citizen and which means their parents should become citizens along with them. These are the ones whom obtain “birthright citizenship” (Raul). The second are firm believers in the only ones that should be citizens are the ones who go through the proper process of becoming a citizen and according to the article in “USA today,” it states that illegal immigrants are “having babies as a way to obtain citizenship,” which too many Americans “cheapens the whole idea of being American”. The last group is the “other” the ones whom are completely neutral or believe in the

Our families are the people we grew up around, whether they are our blood relatives or not. They are the people that make you who you are, though they might not always be around. In the story “House on Mango Street, Esperanza's family plays a huge role in shaping her identity. Throughout the story we are shown how her family, community, culture, and gender impacted her character and actions. In her community, there are Hispanic minorities and people who have lived more unfortunate lives. In fact, her family is a part of this group. Not only are people prejudiced against because of their culture, but the women face sexism from both outsiders and people in their community. Although our identities are influenced by a multitude of factors, the family we are surrounded by in our adolescence end up shaping our identities the most.

History is the study of past events leading up to the present day. It is a research, a narrative, or an account of past events and developments that are commonly related to a person, an institution, or a place. It is a branch of knowledge that records and analyzes