I. Drew’s Transition
Drew is transitioning from a lucrative career into a career in Student Affairs. According to Goodman et al. (2006), a transition is “any event, or non-event, which results in changed relationships, routines, assumptions, and roles.” Drew’s transition is an anticipated transition, which means the transition occurred predictably. Drew is experiencing his transition within the context of work and personal relationships. He is sacrificing a profitable career and a luxury lifestyle to pursue a master’s degree in Student Affair. Drew’s wife will have to go without upscale material while Drew transition. If evaluating Drew’s transition from a short-term perspective, one may consider the transition negative. However, when looking
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While growing up, Drew watched his immigrant parents struggle to provide for his family. His parents worked hard to ensure Drew and his sibling received a good education. Drew never imagined living a lucrative life because of the struggle his parents endured. Drew’s parent was not able to speak fluent English. Due to this, Drew could feel obligated to make sure he learned English so he would not struggle like his parents. While in undergrad, Drew minored in Sociology. As a sociology minor, he took courses that primarily focused on race, class, and other aspects of sociology. These courses encouraged Drew to crave more knowledge about his culture and …show more content…
In college, Drew would have been classified with the first generation students, low-income/poor students, and the working class students. After college, Drew classified with the upper-middle class because of the wealth and success he endured. Drew entered college at a disadvantage because he was amongst the low-income and working class. Lehmann (2014) expressed that regardless of a student’s disadvantage they could still experience success. The work of Yosso and the Community Cultural Wealth Model is relevant to Drew’s experience. Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth Model outlined six forms of capitals, such as: Aspirational capital, Linguistic capital, familial capital, social capital, navigational capital, and resistant capital. Drew possessed each of these capitals in some way. By remaining positive despite of his despite of his struggle he exhibited aspirational capital. The text stated Drew’s parent weren’t fluent in English, which mean his primary language must be Chinese. However, drew was fluent in English. By being bilingual, drew possess linguistic capital. Being a sociology major, Drew took a few classes revolving around race. These courses inspired drew to learn more about his ethnic group. Eventually, Drew began to reject the dominate culture. Rejecting the dominate culture and connecting with his own ethnic group, Drew has familial capital. Being in a white
The American dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of birthplace, social class, or economic class, can attain success in the American society. Sadly, countless people will never achieve success in this society because they are foreign born. In Warren St. John’s book Outcasts United, St. John sheds light onto the numerous hardships that the tiny American town of Clarkston faces when thousands of refugees attempt to create a brand-new life there. At first Clarkston stood completely divided by original residents and refugees, but it wasn’t until the refugees and old residents saw past their physical differences of language, culture, and past life experiences that Clarkston began to thrive. Although the majority of projects started out helping
Richard Wright grew up in a bitterly racist America. In his autobiography Black Boy, he reveals his personal experience with the potency of language. Wright delineates the efficacious role language plays in forming one’s identity and social acceptance through an ingenious use of various rhetorical strategies.
These stories helped shape my scenarios and created my argument about being open-minded with perspectives. One story in particular, in regards to achieving the American dream as an immigrant really sheds light on the point in hand. “Moving to the U.S” by Kirk Semple is about the success of three business men who emigrated from their country to the U.S. and triumphed with the thanks of modern technology. All three men did not speak English fluently, they were still able to go between the lines and challenged the belief of having to know English in order to succeed in America. The purpose of Semples article is to show readers that the traditional perspective of English as an official language is not essentially the only perspective to reflect
Imagine growing up in a society where a person is restricted to learn because of his or her ethnicity? This experience would be awful and very emotional for one to go through. Sherman Alexie and Fredrick Douglas are examples of prodigies who grew up in a less fortunate community. Both men experienced complications in similar and different ways; these experiences shaped them into men who wanted equal education for all. To begin, one should understand the writers background. Sherman Alexie wrote about his life as a young Spokane Indian boy and the life he experienced (page 15). He wrote to encourage people to step outside their comfort zone and be herd throughout education. Similar to Alexie’s life experience, Fredrick
In conclusion, in Conley’s memoir he focuses on his experience of switching schools, while in the third grade, from a predominantly African American and Latino school to a predominantly caucasian elementary school. His memoir focuses on the differences in his experiences at each school and how race and class further separated the similarities between his two schools. Conley focuses equally on race and class and how they both influenced and shaped his life, but class was the primary influence on Conley’s
The novel “Women Without class” by Julie Bettie, is a society in which the cultural you come from and the identity that was chosen for you defines who you are. How does cultural and identity illustrate who we are or will become? Julie Bettie demonstrates how class is based on color, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. The author describes this by researching her work on high school girls at a Central Valley high school. In Bettie’s novel she reveals different cliques that are associated within the group which are Las Chicas, Skaters, Hicks, Preps, and lastly Cholas and Cholos. The author also explains how race and ethnicity correspondence on how academically well these students do. I will be arguing how Julie Bettie connects her theories of inequality and culture capital to Pierre Bourdieu, Kimberle Crenshaw, Karl Marx and Engels but also how her research explains inequality among students based on cultural capital and identity.
Collins further talks about economic, cultural, and specifically linguistic reproduction. linguistic capital is a more specific form of capital. It refers to the role of language and class in social reproduction. This concept was originally coined by Basil Bernstein, who argued that “the experience of work process reinforces kinds of family role relations, themselves realized as discursive identities that are carried by ‘elaborated’ and ‘restricted’ codes” (39). We saw this in the 1960s; poor African Americans performed inadequately in school because they were culturally or linguistically deprived. Not only is race a determining factor in the social reproduction of inequality, but it is a combination of how facets of our identity intersect with changing values and norms of our society.
...old, xenophobic white men don’t want just anyone off the street joining them for intellectual discussions over Sunday tea . This is why Wallace advocates for students in high school and college to learn SWE; if students are able to present themselves in a more erudite and intellectual manner by using SWE, it can provide them with more opportunities to ascend the “social ladder” as they will have a stronger foundation for academic and professional success. Using SWE will not guarantee that a student will become a doctor or a lawyer, however, they will have the opportunity to expand their education and achieve that ranking if they wish.
As each new era of foreigners migrate to America, they face the obstacle of conforming to mainstream America. As “Hester Street” and “Eat a Bowl of Tea” portrayed, immigrants come to this land of opportunities with the hopes and dreams of a better life for themselves or their families. In “Hester Street”, Jake, a Russian Jewish immigrant who lived in New York's Lower East Side for five years, leaving his wife behind, and taking up with a new woman and earning enough money to support his dance hall ways. On the other hand, in “Eat a bowel of tea”, Wah Gay is a traditional Chinese immigrant who owns a club in Chinatown, and sends all his money to his wife back in China, who he has not seen in 20 years because of the inequitable immigration laws that had prevented Chinamen bringing their women into the country.
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 will then talk about how my perceptions of life opportunities have been shaped by the Asian-American model minority myth. Then, I will argue how my working class location has impacted my interactions in institutional settings and my middle/upper class peers. Third, I will discuss how gender inequalities in the workplace and the ideological intersection of my race and gender as an Asian-American woman have shaped my experiences with men. I will use Takaki’s (1999) concepts of model minority myth and American identity, Race; The Power of an Illusion (2003), Espiritu’s (2001) ideological racism, People Like Us: Social Class in America (1999) and Langston’s (2001) definition of class to support my argument.
Having a family of low socioeconomic status inevitably leaves me to reside in a low-income neighborhood which makes it more likely for me to witness the tragedies, adversities and hardships that people go through [not excluding myself]. Being conscious of this kind of environment, and these kinds of events, creates a pressure on me for having the aim to achieve social mobility in order to escape the aforementioned environment so that my own children could witness one less abominable aspect of life. Moreover, my family’s low socioeconomic status does not authorize me the privilege of being raised with the concerted cultivation method that kids of high socioeconomic status are more prone to being raised in. My family did not have the financial resources that granted us access to extra classes or lessons of instrumental classes, swimming practices, karate practices, or any other extracurricular activities that people of high socioeconomic status would be able to afford. This invisible fence that prevents me from these extracurricular activities enables me to having more appreciation towards the hobbies and talents that other people have. Plus, the fact that my family’s low socioeconomic status acts as a barrier from enjoying expensive luxuries in life creates a yearning [in me] to enjoy them later on in my life, in addition to acting as the fuel to my wish of achieving social mobility in anticipation of providing my own children with the luxurious vacations, gadgets, beachhouse, new cars that I could not
Some theorists have argued that non-white parents who do not themselves speak English as a native language are more cynical about, or indifferent to, the value of education than are white or Asian parents (Gilborn, 2008). Some non-white parents have told researchers that education is unlikely to raise the status of their child; others, especially under-educated parents, have expressed the concern that education will somehow turn their children against them (Gilborn, 2008). Finally, scholars have noted that cultures in which English is deeply embedded
In the article he wrote about how he was embarrassed by his parents because of the way they spoke. They did not speak English fluently or had much of an education. He did not want to be like them. He worked hard in his studies and blocked out the world. He wanted to be better. I remember a time in my life where I too was embarrassed to be seen with my parents and have them speak English. I am not sure why but I was. I guess I did not want people to associate me with them, my parents, and see me as less. I have always tried hard in school and try to do my best. A lot of the time is because I have the opportunity to, and my parents gave me
As he comments later on, “neither was as much a creature of free will as a human being ought to be,” C.R. p. 69) but the promise of fitting in, wooing girls, and etiquette lead him down the path to being an atypical Asian.... ... middle of paper ... ... Mastering a second language allows her to articulate her and her mother’s thoughts; it is a foundation for her pride and a foundation to express herself. For Gloria Anzaldua, instead of choosing one language over the other, she chose a mix of the two and fought for it.
white, middle-class, and “achievement orientated” (Finnan 95). Spindler noticed that Harker will always ranked the white kids higher than the students of color on “academic promise” and social interactions (Finnan 97). He gave his white students the majority of his attention in class and demanded more from them. From this research, Spindler concluded that self-identity is formed in the classroom for many of these students. The students form a sense of who they are through others reaction, especially the teacher. Students who teachers informed that they are capable, had bright futures, and were among those who ranked high on reading. Often students noticed that their teacher did not consider them to be worthy, so they slacked off which eventually