The aspect of this reading that affected me the most was the idea of sacrifice, and the differences in sacrifice that different ethnic groups had to experience in order to try and create better lives for themselves and their children. While there is a certain amount of sacrifice that goes into any large move, the differences are highlighted in the Korean ran versus Chinese ran factory comparison.

Chinese garment factory owners hired mostly Chinese women as employees. The common backgrounds helped foster a relaxed and accepting environment for the workers. These workers, who were not just Chinese women, but Chinese women who were young and/or mothers, could not afford childcare. Therefore, they would bring their children to work and into the accepting environment. So if their families were intact, where is the sacrifice? The sacrifice was in the wages. Minimum wage was justified because the garment factory acted as a childcare facility. Although this short-term sacrifice does not seem like much of an issue, the real problems evolved as a result over time. These children basically grew up learning the ins and outs of a garment factory, and developing connections within them. Although I do not believe it was intentional, many families became confined to the garment factories. It was a comfortable environment, and so instead of moving forward, children of the workers remained stagnant.

Korean garment factory owners hired Hispanics instead of people of their own kind. The sacrifice is not too obvious. The issue was not that the Hispanics could not bring their children to work, but that they left their children behind in their home countries of Mexico and Ecuador in order to earn money to send back home. I worked as a waitress in my local suburban diner before starting school here at Hunter College, and the stories that I heard from my Hispanic coworkers were not identical, but very similar. Many of my coworkers did not have children that they left behind (most were in their low and mid 20s), but rather parents. They were working at the restaurant to save up money to send back to their homelands for their parents use. It was a sacrifice they were willing to make in order to help their mothers and fathers. Luckily, our work environment was accepting because it’s the 21^st century, but the Hispanics that left their children to work in garment factories had to deal with a strict and less comfortable environment.

Alexandra Marks