-
Macaulay Honors College
at Baruch, Spring 2011Professor Els de Graauw
ITF Emily Sherwood -
Authors
▪ Alyssa Alicino
▪ Brandon Baksh
▪ Ru Xiao Chen
▪ Belinda Chiu
▪ Els de Graauw
▪ Becca Glickman
▪ Elisabeth Greenberg
▪ Doris Hu
▪ Peky Huang
▪ Toby Joseph
▪ Haesol Jun
▪ Nika Kartvelishvili
▪ Farrukh Khan
▪ Holly Kiang
▪ Julian Kipnis
▪ Kar Yi Lim
▪ Yang Lin
▪ Cait McCarthy
▪ Sofya Moshkovich
▪ Mariya Tuchinskaya
▪ Ying Zhang Login
To login, click here.
Encounters with Discrimination
Immigrating to a new country – perhaps thousands of miles away, across oceans, hemispheres and continents – comes with many hardships, including the challenges of learning a new language, finding employment, and supporting one’s family and keeping a roof over one’s head.
At times, the integration process is made even more challenging due to the discrimination that immigrants face in their new home country. Whether stemming from anti-immigrant sentiment or ignorance, many immigrants – especially those of color – have been victims of discrimination. Some are discriminated against because of their religious beliefs, the color of their skin, the clothes they wear, or simply the way they speak.
Even in a place like New York, where we pride ourselves on diversity and tolerance, prejudice is not uncommon. Some of our respondents, however, also experienced discrimination back home, which often is a reason why they wanted to leave their home country. Below are some quotes on encounters with discrimination that our interview respondents shared with us.
Click on another subcategory (Immigration Process, Learning English, Finding Employment, Political Participation & Citizenship, or Miscellaneous) to explore other quotations about the immigration process.
Cocaine-Smuggling Innocents
Johnny, a 30-year-old male immigrant, talked about the obstacles he faced when he tried to immigrate to the United States as a Colombian national. He was born in Venezuela, brought up in Colombia, and then moved to New York City at the age of 11 and back again at 18:
They had applied for us to come to the United States as a Colombian citizen, but at the time Columbia was experiencing one of its most dangerous, most violent times probably in recorded history. And, Colombians have a stigma with them of being cocaine smugglers or something that’s negative. […] And so because they applied for us under Colombian citizenship, I was denied. I could have entered the U.S. under Venezuelan citizenship with no problem. But we did not know the law, we did not know that was possible, that it could be that simple. So, because I was denied, my mother at the time […] she tried to get us, get me, here.”
Insulting Distrust
Pedro, a 26-year-old male immigrant from Brazil, migrated to the United Stats at age 13. Here, he is recounts an instance when he felt that he and his girlfriend were discriminated against:
There was an incident when me and my […] girlfriend were in a store in Manhattan, central area, very high area in probably Fifth Avenue. And the store there was pretty expensive and…we were looking around for a while, you know, really liking the things there. We came out, we actually bought some things, and the security stopped us at the […] door and asked us for our […] receipt. And I thought that was completely unnecessary and I told the guy […] it seemed to me the only reason they stopped us was because […] they thought we were Hispanic […] they thought we were going to steal something based on, pretty much, the way we looked. […] Nobody else was being asked for a receipt, nobody else was stopped at the door, and… pretty much this was completely unnecessary.”
Passive Discrimination
Kevin is a Chinese immigrant who came into the United States in 2003 when he was 18 years old. He commented that at times he feels he is being treated differently because he is an immigrant:
Well, I don’t really feel about it, but like sometimes I know it, but like, you know, the people here don’t want to be mean. They try to be nice, but like sometimes I can feel, you know, like when they do what they do… they think I am a foreigner. They will maybe, like, treat me differently.”
Religious Discrimination in Russia
Ivan came to America at the age of 15 from St. Petersburg, Russia. He is now 47, has a family, and works as a freelance computer programmer. When asked if life in America was difficult for a new immigrant he replied (translation from Russian):
No… life was difficult in Russia, where I had to go to school everyday and try not to get beat up. Where I had problems with anti-Semitic teachers. Here life was not difficult. Just took some work.”
I Know What I’m Doing
Choi immigrated to the United States from Korea about 10 years ago. She is now 46 years old. When asked if she had experienced any form of discrimination at her workplace, she said:
Not really, because I hang out with Koreans all the time. But there are some white girls who work there too, and they always complain about how Flushing is not America because it’s all Chinese and Korean. And they talk among themselves behind our backs, but we all know what they’re doing. We just don’t say anything. Once, I was looking at the appointment book and she comes up to me and says, “You’re supposed to check the date first. This page is for Friday” in such a condescending tone. So annoying, that b****! I know what I’m doing, you know? So [she suggested that] I need to learn English.”
Language Discrimination
Choi immigrated to the United States from Korea about 10 years ago. She is now 46 years old. Here, she comments on what she sees as language discrimination:
Once, I went to the bank and I was waiting on line for the longest time. Not because they were really busy, but only because they were busy talking with each other for fun. And when I try to confront them, they don’t care. They ignore you and say “go wait online, I’m busy.” But if some other person who speaks English fluently goes to confront them, they say “sorry.” Nothing big, but things like that happen all the time. You need to speak English to be treated right.”
Discrimination Where You Least Expect It
Rose moved to the United States from Jamaica at the age of 14. She has lived in New York City since and has flourished both academically and socially. She commented on how she learned about discrimination in the classroom:
I remember in high school one time I had this teacher and she was Black-American and apparently there is this long-standing rivalry between Black-Americans, Black-American people and Caribbean people that I didn’t really know about, and so she would make these comments all the time about the Jamaican people in her class and she said, uhm, someone had said that they were rich in Jamaica and then she had said that that was not possible because no one in Jamaica is rich and if we were we wouldn’t be here. And then she went on to make further comments about how we all drank the same contaminated water and how her image of Jamaicans is that we dance bare-feet in grass skirts… I was really shocked that a teacher would say that because… like I expect my teachers to be very professional and not bring in personal prejudices into their teaching. Uhm, and I was also a little angry about that just because it was so ignorant and offensive, but, I got over it.”
The Difference Between Them and Us
Anna immigrated to the United States from China. She is now 49 years old and has been in the country for approximately 25 years. Here, she explains how she feels discriminated against because she is Chinese:
People look down on you here. We’re Chinese people and we’re different. […] The white people, they look at you differently. Some of them are friendly, but no one wanted to be friends with the Chinese people. They didn’t want us here. Black people, too. They make fun of us. They say mean things. They pick on us and they make us scared. […] My brother told me that life was hard here. I didn’t believe him, but I began to saw that people do treat each other differently. It was different from China. No one counted on each other. Only the immigrants stuck together, to help one another out.”
Jewish People Constantly Discriminated Against
Svetlana, 41, emigrated from Russia to the United States and has been living here for 15 years. She explains how discrimination in Russia drove her to migrate to the United States:
Life in Russia was pretty difficult, especially for me because I’m Jewish and in Russia Jewish people were treated with a lot of animosity and they were discriminated against almost everywhere they went. […] My father even had to change our family’s name from X to Y to make it sound more Russian than Jewish so that my sister and I wouldn’t be made fun of in school. […] Getting into college in Russia wasn’t easy at all, once again especially because we were Jewish. Most Jewish people never got into any top universities or any good school… no matter how good their grades were, no matter how much they were qualified. I didn’t even bother applying to the university that I really wanted to go to because I knew that there was no chance that I would get in just because I’m Jewish.”
Discrimination is Natural
Daisy immigrated to the United States from India. She is now 58 years old and has been in the country for over twenty-eight years. She shared her thoughts on discrimination in the United States:
This is immigrant country. People are from all parts of the world, so it’s not like one country where people are all from the same place so there is… it is… people look different from others, so that is why there is discrimination. It is, it is natural. […] People come from you know… same group of people, same belong to same… they stick together. But you know, because of your color, because of all races, because of all that, it will never change. There are others who think they are better, that their race is better, and that [the] other race is wrong. Discrimination never will go away. It is natural.”
