Asian Americans: Exclusion and Segregation

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The United States of America is the place of opportunity and fortune. “Many immigrants hoped to achieve this in the United States and similar to other immigrants many people from the Asian Pacific region hoped to make their fortune. They planned to either return to their homelands or build a home in their new country (Spring, 2013).” For this reason, life became very complicated for these people. They faced many challenges in this new country, such as: classifying them in terms of race and ethnicity, denying them the right to become naturalized citizens, and rejecting them the right of equal educational opportunities within the school systems. “This combination of racism and economic exploitation resulted in the educational policies to deny Asians schooling or provide them with segregated schooling (Spring, 2013).”This was not the country of opportunity and fortune as many believed. It was the country of struggle and hardship. Similarly, like many other immigrants, Asian Americans had the determination to overcome these obstacles that they faced to prove that the United States was indeed their home too.
The terms Asian American, Asian Pacific American, and Asian Pacific Islander are all used to describe residents of the United States, who themselves are from or their ancestors were from the Asian Pacific region of the world. “Although the term Asian American may bring to mind someone of Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, or Asian Indian descent, the U.S. Census Bureau actually includes 31 different groups within the Asian Pacific designation (Sigler, 1998).” For example, someone from Guatemala, Cambodia, Samoa, Thailand, Laos, Hawaii, or Tonga would also fall into this category of being Asian American, even though ...

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...re from education in those schools (Spring, 2013).”

Works Cited

Chan, S. (1993). Asian Americans: An Interpretative History. New York: Twayne Publishers.
Himilce N., L. C. (2004). Everything You Need to Know About Asian American History. London: Plume.
Sigler, J. A. (1998). Civil Rights in America: 1500 to the Present. Detroit: Gale.
Spring, J (2013). Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality: A Brief History of the Education of Dominated Cultures in the United States, 7th Edition, McGraw-Hill.
Takaki, R. (1993). A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Little Brown and Company.
Smith, R. (1997). Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History. New Haven: Yale Press University.
Wollenberg, C. (1978). All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools. University of California Press, 29-34.

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