The part of Kwong’s Chapter 4 that resonated most with me was the education discussion. I have gone to school with mostly children of Asian immigrants my entire life. I saw how much they valued education. The children worked diligently in school only to go to an after school program on the weekdays and school on the weekends to study more. I watched how my fellow students snickered when an Asian student solved a math problem that no one else in the class understood. But as I began to see when I got older (and as Kwong states in the chapter), these trends were oversimplified. First, “Asian” became the nomenclature for “Chinese”, “Japanese”, “Korean”, “Vietnamese”, etc. These people from completely different countries were being grouped into one large stereotype: Asians (Asians work hard, Asians are good students, etc.) Second, Kwong describes the differences between the Uptown Chinese and the Downtown Chinese. Among the Chinese themselves, there are many differences. The Downtown Chinese are much less likely to conform to this “Asian” stereotype since they have less opportunities in Chinatown. If there are so many differences among one “Asian” group, it is that much more wrong to combine completely different people into one false category. It is true that many Chinese, Korean, etc. people value education more than Americans, but just as we can not generalize Americans, we can not generalize these groups either. After all, some Americans value education more than the Chinese. Kwong’s discussion of education in Chinatown highlights the more general problems with the way we view the Chinese immigrants in America. I feel that we tend to 1) refer to the Chinese immigrants as extremely hard working, resourceful, successful individuals or 2) view the immigrants as living in squalid conditions with insufficient means to support themselves. As Kwon argues, it’s just not that simple. Chinatown (like every community) has many layers and is a combination of the two above conditions. If we want to better understand Chinatown, immigration, and ethnic boundaries in general, we must stop making generalizations because oversimplifying makes us closed minded.

-On a somewhat unrelated note, I found that the exploitation of the Chinese immigrants was very similar to Orsi’s description of the Italians immigrants in East Harlem. Some of the Chinese had to work in terrible conditions and endure abuse from their bosses but they could not complain because they were “lucky to have a job”. Similarly, the Italians had to endure work related injustices because if they complained, they would lose their jobs and would eventually starve. It’s such a terrible situation that I can’t imagine being in.