The American Spirit by Thomas A. Bailey, David M. Kennedy
Eighth Edition, Volume II
Introdution to 5. in Chapter 45
a. Ronald Takaki, "Have Asian Americans made it?" San Francisco Examiner (January 10, 1984): 12
b. Ronald Takaki, "Asian Americans in the University," San Francisco Examiner (April 16, 1984): 14.
introduction quote:
-"
Thousands of Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the United States nearly a century ago, but the Chinese influx was shut down by Congress in 1882, and prospective Japanese migrants were prohibited by a series of agreements in the arly twentieth century, culminating in their total exclusion in the Immigration Act of 1924 as "aliens inelegible to citizenship." As a result, until recent decades both the Chinese-American and Japanese-American communities remained exceedingly small and strictly isolated by racial prejudice. Since immigration-law reforms in the 1960's, however, Asian immigration to the United States has increased dramatically. Asian-Americans, including Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Filipinos, now constitute a large, growing, and remarkably successful component of American's multiethnic mosiac. Their economic and educational achievements, in fact, have earned them the title of a "model minority." Yet in the following articles, Ronald Takaki, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California at Berkeley and a leading commentator on Asian-American affairs, questions the accuracy of that description. What does he see at most misleading about it? To what factors does he attribute the relative success of Aisan-Americans? What does he see as the particular needs of Asian-American university students?
"-end of quote for introduction
a. Have Asian Americans Made It? (select quotes)
"Lily Lee Chen is not merely the first Chinese American women to be mayor in the United States... elevated by Jay Mathew... She is a graduate of San Francisco State University, whose President is Dr. Chia-Wei Woo... she was sworn in as mayor of Monterey Park... by U.S. Disctrict Court Judge Robert M. Takasugi, one of the 110,000 Japanese Americans interned by the fed. gov. during World War II..."
"Mathews provides surprising statistics on incomes which seem to demonstrate convincingly that Chinese Americans and Asian Americans in general have not only entered the middle class - they have overtaken white Americans. Chinese American family incomes in California in 1980 have surpassed white family incomes: $24,409 to 22,753. And Asian American families earn annually $699 more than white families."
"This Asian American success has already been celebrated by Hoover Institution scholar Thomas Sowell in his book 'Ethic America,' published in 1981. According to Sowell, family incomes for Chinese and Japanese Americans exceed the national average by 12 and 32 percent, respectively."
"How can we know whether or not Asian Americans are as successful as Mathews and Sowell claim? Statistics can often yield conclusions we are looking for rather than ones we need to understand reality. In other words, how we measure success may determine our conclusions."
b. Asian Americans in the University (select quotes)
"In its recent celebration of Aisan American success in higher education, 'Newsweek' reported the dazzling achievements of a new generation of Asian Americans on college campuses. At leading universities everywhere - from Cornell and MIT to Stanford and UCLA, they represent a rapidly increasing student population. One of four undergraduates at UC Berkeley is an Asian American. In fact, Asian Americans are the most highly educated group in the United States: in 1980, one third of all Asian Americans aged 25 and over had four or more years of college education, compared with eight precent of Blacks and 17 percent of whites.
"For most Asian Americans, the university has become a technical school: they are almost twice as likely as whites to major in science, mathematics or engineering. At Berkeley, the overwhelming majority of them are in technical disciplines, especially electrical engineering and computer sciences."
"Thus, many Asian Americans in the university find themselves avoiding fields which require strong competency in English - their second language."
"When Asian American students arrive at the university, they find little there to interest them in the humanities and social sciences. Even those who are American-born and those who have a perfect command of the English language are not drawn into these areas of learning. In terms of role models, they do not see Asian American professors in fields like sociology, history, psychology, political science and literature. And when they teke courses in these areas, they often feel left out."
"And 'Newsweek' sanguinely concludes: 'Given Asian Americans' extraordinary record of accomplishmen, this too will surely come.' Actually, give what is happening without and whithin the university, I would not be so sure."
-end of quotes-
In conclusion, I'd like to say that regardless of nationality, it is the core of internal character and one's personal outlook of life that will greatly determine whether you are willing to allow society to weigh you down, or to even attempt to perceive all/or any of the factors that may or may not logically come together, but to say, if you are willing to lead society to brigher horizons?
If you don't get accepted into a college, try another. If you still can't figure it out, do a community college, then go to a university, then to almost any school that will accept you afterwards.
As ATI would put it, "made with no limits in mind."
p.s. There are only 2 rules to life =
1. the ones you accept,
2. and the ones you make for yourself.
Facebook
Twitter