Minorities in America- Asian Americans

I am going to discuss in this post my findings from the website http://www.asian-nation.org/ this website shows the view of Asian Americans and aims to educate others about Asian Americans.

According to this website the Asian American community makes up roughly 5% of the American population and is rapidly increasing, it says 'we are one of the fastest growing racial/ethnic groups (in terms of percentage increase) in the U.S'. However, despite the fact that this community is quite large they still feel that they are unfairly treated: 'the Asian American community has received a lot of scrutiny over the years but in many ways, still remains misunderstood'.The website also describes how Asian American is quite a broad term and acknowledges that there are many Asian groups within Asian Americans (Korean, Indonesian, Japanese, Filipino etc), it also defines the term Asian American as:
'the population living in the U.S. who self-identify as having Asian or Pacific Islander ancestry, in whole or in part, regardless of whether they're U.S.- or foreign-born, a U.S. citizen or not, length of residence, or in the U.S. legally or illegally. I also use the following terms to mean the same thing: Asian American, Asian Pacific American (APA), and Asian Pacific Islander (API). Of course, being "Asian" is not necessarily the same as being "Asian American" and I focus on this distinction throughout Asian-Nation'.

This website also describes how there are 2 stereotypes of Asian Americans: 'all Asian Americans are the same' and 'all Asian Americans are foreigners'. The first stereotype, they say, is negative because (as mentioned above) 'many people are either unable or unwilling to distinguish between different Asian ethnicities' leading to over-generalization and thus some ethnic groups get ignored altogether. The other stereotype is viewed as also negative because people assume that every Asian American is a foreigner although some Asian Americans come from families where many generations have been U.S. citizens; the website says, 'it becomes easier to think of us as not fully American and then to deny us the same rights that other Americans take for granted...that means prejudice and discrimination'.

The website has many sections such as culture, ethnic groups, and issues (each including various articles and blogs) but I will now focus, in brief, on the early history of Asian Americans portrayed on this website:

• The first Asians settled in the U.S (around what would be Louisianna) in 1750 and then just less than a century later Asians were brought over as slaves to the islands of the Caribbean, Peru, Ecuador, and other countries in South America. However, in 1848 there was large-scale immigration to America due to the Gold Rush and economic hardship in China
  
• Chinese miners in California were discriminated against in the Foreign Miner Tax which should have been collected from all foreigners but was only collected from the Chinese. Objection to paying this led to being victims of murder and attacks.
  
• From 1865 many Chinese worked for Transcontinental Railroad project doing the most dangerous jobs but only getting paid 60% of what European immigrants received
• After their labour wasn't needed and they were seen as an econmic threat there was anti-Chinese movements culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882. 'This act barred virtually all immigration from China and prevented all Chinese already in the U.S. from becoming U.S. citizens, even their American-born children. For the first time in U.S. history, a specific ethnic group was singled out and forbidden to enter the U.S'. As a response to this discrimination Chinatowns developed from which the stereotypical images of Chinese restaurants, laundry shops and Japanese gardens come from; this was not them trying to force their culture on America but out of neccessity as they had nowhere else to go.
  

I find all of this history about the early Asian Americans fascinating because it isn't as well known as say the history of African Americans yet they were so horribly discriminated against; this is obviously an example of American history which has been excluded from being taught in schools as it does not show the popular ideology of America. The website says that this 'prejudice, exclusion, and institutional discrimination...still continues in many respects today. Nonetheless, even in the face of this hostile anti-Chinese climate, Chinese Americans fought for not only their rights, but also for their dignity and self-respect...though much of their efforts would be unsuccessful, the actions demonstrated that above all else, they wanted to become Americans and be treated just like any other American'.