For many people, race is an important factor that contributes to their identity. It is the right of an individual to recognize themselves as part of a particular race group. That is not to say that any person should randomly choose their identity based on whim. On the contrary, a person’s racial identification is influenced […]
There are times when I can go through life barely trying to look at things for more than they appear on the outside. But recently I’ve been questioning a lot about how society operates and why we do the things we do and see the things we see. The piece, Racial Formation in the United […]
Daniel Cohen Discussion Blog Post #1 Ginetta E. B. Candelario wrote a splendid analysis of the Anacostia Museum’s Black Mosaic exhibit, which covers the history of black immigrants in the Washington, D.C. area. Candelario’s principal argument is that the U.S. has a very binary concept of race, whereas many black immigrants from regions such as […]
Race is no intrinsic biological component of identity but may be used at the discretion of the individual in order to either strengthen or shed light upon a related longstanding history and culture. In “Racial Formation,” Michael Omi and Howard Winant propose the definition, “race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and […]
Peter Kwong’s analysis of the flaws in the immigration debate gave voice to many of my ideas in a way that I was not able to explain. He provided historical context like the Chinese Exclusion Act to point out how deeply xenophobia and immigration restrictions are ingrained in American culture. Although I learned about these […]
What defines American culture? The fact that it’s a “melting pot” or a “salad bowl”, depending on which way you look at it. The fact that it’s unique because it’s not just one culture. It’s the build up of culture after culture that was brought here, to the New World. There’s only one reason America […]
Amongst the varied points raised in Peter Kwong’s “What’s Wrong with the U.S. Immigration Debate?”, stands an issue that is touched upon seldom: the ever-increasing ethnic disunity created between documented and undocumented individuals of the same race through the passage of legislation and the continued exploitation of said legislation. These laws are many and far […]
While reading “Making the Model Minority Myth” by Robert. G. Lee, I could not help but laugh at how true of a description of Asians in America we were given. A lot of the characteristics of Asian Americans talked about in the article resonated with me because as an Asian American myself I can say […]
The management of immigration in the United States has been a major topic for discussion since the 19th century. With each wave of immigrants arriving from different countries come complaints on the part of the native citizens. From a young age, we are taught in school that immigrants come to the United States searching for […]
While reading Peter Kwong’s piece, What’s wrong with the U.S. Immigration Debate, a concept that was totally lost on me was the lack of human compassion that many people feel when discussing the immigrant issue. But even before that, the fact that immigration is viewed as “issue” is unsettling to me. Is America not a […]
