Asian Americans: A Successful Immigrant Story - Research Paper

Introduction

The United States is a nation with a long history of immigrants as it successfully absorbed people across the world. The immigrants contributed to a changing culture together with economic vitality. Notably, one of the successful immigrants is the Asian American, whose diversification and growth in its population is one of the largest in history of U.S immigrants. Asian American immigrants brought with them their own culture and traditions, which are believed to be the origin of their success nature (Healey, Stepnick, & O'Brien, 2018). As they adapted quickly to the western way of living they contributed immensely to the attainment of American Dream. They are highest paying income earners, most educated, and it is a race that is growing very fast. Also, they are considered to be more satisfied in terms of finances, direction of the country, and their lives compared to the general public. The paper will analyze the main characteristics of the Asian American culture which is significant to them. Also, it discusses how those notable characteristics brought about relationships of the group with the larger society. Lastly, the paper will describe how the group culture contributes immensely to the success of the Asian American group.

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Cultural Characteristics of Asian American Groups

The groups faced many challenges in the process of trying to establish their cultural identity, especially the immigrants who fall under the second generation. Notably, this generation struggled a lot to balance artistic ideas with the pressure of entering into the cultural society of America. While studying people from Asian ancestry, more focus should be put on understanding Eastern philosophies such as Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism (Healey et al., 2018). Those philosophies are behind how structures of family look like the hierarchy, and the paternal.

In Asian American family systems, children are warned about bringing shame to their families, and they are taught the importance of family integrity and welfare. Principles of peace, harmony, and balance are also guided by the Asian philosophies, which as a result assist Asians to appear indecisive, passive, and indifferent, and help them avoid confrontation (Weinberg, 2012). As a sign of their ancestral culture, most Asian students use indirect communication, which they feel is appropriate for them.

They were collectivistic groups where the parenting and family unit were considered central to them. However, there were some expectations and practices that varied in different communities and homes. All their cultural values supported achievement of education, and they had the amount of hard work within them with high parent expectations concerning education matters (Healey et al., 2018). Due to their collectivism the Asian American groups practiced family honor.

A traditional culture focused majorly on respecting ancestors and elders, together with strict obedience within members of the groups. The norms were enforced via discipline, which when broken the consequence was known to be physical punishment (Weinberg, 2012). Some of Asian American members hold beliefs on structure that contains family power, which is patriarchal and highly hierarchal. There was strong sense of deference to both teachers and schools instead of active participation concerning emphasis on harmony through education.

Asian American Cultural Characteristics in Shaping Relationships With the Larger Society

The hard-working culture of Asian Americans resulted in rising productivity, and doing so they influenced the liberal society to work towards prosperity too so that they do not remain behind. They challenged the community at large to adopt the hard work nature for upward mobility. The idea was diffused across other ethnic groups, which applied it to make ends meet for their survival.

Through their strong belief in educational achievement, they were able to get high skills and knowledge, and through doing so the whole society had to empress education too from their better future and to compete favorably with Asian Americans who were seriously enrolling in school (Healey et al., 2018). Through education they learned how to mobilize resources and get information making higher economic growth and development, which the society at large rip benefits from the event.

The family systems which were hierarchal allowed for respect and obedience of everyone in the society, which is a sense of discipline, harmony, and peace. The net result is stability in families, which created room for success. The confidence in its own is an excellent picture of the society at large; hence Asian Americans culture was attractive to other races.

The Asian Americans culture shaped the relationship with the society at large through the practice of collectivism, which enabled them to share values as a community and as a group. Their collectivity made them relate positively with other members and the whole society which can apply the same.

Contribution of Cultural Characteristics to Asian American Success

Asian Americans were progressing upwards relative to other groups. They resided in wealthier neighborhoods, high education, and were successful in labor market. Their success is due to their promising culture which stressed on importance of educational achievement. They aimed at perfecting their learning virtues to intellectually and morally prospering. The values they were looking for are concentration, sincerity, respect, perseverance, and diligence during their learning process (Healey et al., 2018). The students of Asian Americans believed in hard work in their studies as they knew hard work pays off. Being a second-generation immigrants, they were self-selected group who combined effort and education to go hand in hand for their future prosperity as they were willingly taking the risk of starting a new journey, a journey which according to them will be fruitful in that particular foreign land they migrated into, and which genuinely made them whom they are today, a group with prosperity in the whole United States.

Asian American groups' successes are attributed to practices and their cultural values. Their beliefs assisted them to focus on education matters, to respect the authority, and maintain high standards of discipline. The cultural characteristics of these groups with support from structural factors were able to create resources used for upward mobility (Lee & Zhou, 2015). The group members were able to establish an interaction of both culture and structure to poster their prosperity with back up from social institutions and possible interpersonal networks that existed within the members of Asian American groups. More so, their success was propelled by communities' forces that helped in shaping the group's upward mobility. The community forces comprised both strategies and cultural beliefs, and through the Asian American made it possible to facilitate social capital formation.

Asian American groups had strong logic of community, and they were collectivists in nature. These characteristics helped them get different types of productive information together with resources to explore a foreign country and culture (Root & Brown, 2014). With the influence of their religion, they secured educational opportunities and employment as they possessed entrepreneurial and professional skills.

Their culture allowed for family stability, which as a result enabled them to unite together and get their children to better schools to help them acquire better education. Also, their culture of being proactive and believing in hard work made them secure most jobs in the media industry and other job opportunities, which assisted them in earning higher incomes.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Asian American culture is not inherent, but it is created by selective immigrants from Asia. The children who belonged to educated immigrants were looking forward to making the next step from the starting points, their quest for benefit resulting from their positive perceptions in the society, and availability of ethnic capital to support their success. The immigrants' moves to seeking prosperity were propelled by exclusion in United States during the time of their immigration. Due to the exclusion, they decided to form their communities where they can be self-sufficient.

References

Healey, J. F., Stepnick, A., & O'Brien, E. (2018). Race, ethnicity, gender, and class: The sociology of group conflict and change. Sage Publications.

Lee, J., & Zhou, M. (2015). The Asian American Achievement Paradox. Russell Sage Foundation.

Root, M. P., & Brown, L. (2014). An analysis of domestic violence in Asian American communities: A multicultural approach to counseling. In Diversity and complexity in feminist therapy (pp. 143-164). Routledge.

Weinberg, M. (2012). Asian-American Education: Historical background and current realities. Routledge.