Asian American Experience

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Asian American Experience

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 treatment by the government, the history of Asian American was being defined and written every day they were in America, waiting to be deported because of the complexion of their skin. Striving everyday to conform and mix with society, the Asian American faced constant rejection and exclusion from the American way of life, defining the history of Asian America.

The Asian Americans came to America with a common goal: to seek work and make money. In the article The Centrality of Racism in Asian American History, Takaki tries to frame the Asian American history and describe the hardships and unfair treatment absorbed by the Asian American. Takaki asserts:

Employers developed a dual wage system to pay Asian laborers less than white workers and pitted the groups against each other in order to depress wages for both. “Ethnic antagonism”- to use Edna Bonacich’s phrase- led white laborers to demand...

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...icies from the government. They never complained about the dual wage system, being paid less than their counterparts, and yet they still were shunned from the labor markets. However, our forefathers continued to fight to establish a life in America, whether it was establishing their own Laundromat or their own restaurant. Even to this day, we have faced many types of discrimination, and even when we continue to work hard and have this American life, society still label us as “aliens.” Furthermore, with the integration of Asia America, we will continue to fight for our way of life and force society to recognize us as one of the groups of America. We will continue to create new history of our struggles as we pass these stories down generation to generation.

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