What I found most striking about Li’s article was the underlying and persistent theme of agency, meaning “the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices” (Wikipedia). In the case of immigration, this would refer to an immigrant/ immigrant group’s ability to shape their experience in America. In other words, to be able to work, live, learn, and socialize the way they want.
Li discusses the history and legacy of the formation of Chinatowns. What struck me most was his point that Chinatowns were both the cause and effect of the white American population’s prejudice against the Chinese. White Americans said that the Chinese were inflexible and unwilling to adapt to American life and Americans used that accusation to justify using legal and social pressures to isolate the Chinese immigrant population into areas now called Chinatowns. Once these Chinatowns were formed, white Americans portrayed them as the physical manifestation of the Chinese immigrants’ backwardness. Chinese immigrants wanted to adapt and integrate, but they could not, and they were later blamed for their failure to integrate. In other words, the Chinese population had no agency in determining the degree to which they adapted to American life.
These facts beg the question- is the same thing happening today? Are Americans once again depriving immigrants of their ability, and, once could even say right, to integrate into American society? There are some segments of American society and government that want to discourage immigration. They cite the fear that new immigrants will not integrate into American society. In light of Li’s article, however, we need to think- is this very question preventing immigrants from integrating? In line with Li’s thinking, America’s fear of immigrant social non-compliance is the actual cause of immigrant’s communities inward withdrawals.
Even if this is not the case we must contemplate the how our own preconceived notions of immigrant groups shapes and distorts our views of them. For example, in the last class we discussed how there are some views that immigrants are unwilling to learn English. When my I thought this point over my gut instinct was to agree and think that due to immigrant communities’ isolation, members of those groups had no need and therefore no desire to learn English. But then I realized that this, in fact, wasn’t true. According to New York City statistics English classes are extremely oversubscribed, meaning that there are a lot more immigrants that want to take classes than there are spaces available. This is exactly the kind of bias that Li makes note of: fact-less and untrue. Reading Li’s article has made me more aware of the necessity of carefully identifying and overriding biases in order to gain a more realistic picture of America’s immigrant population.
