Comparison of Asian Americans and Latino American Experiences - Paper Example

Introduction

For a very long time, the United States has always been a multicultural nation. Due to this fact, the US has been widely associated with issues such as the racism, discrimination, xenophobia, as well as the comments to violent crimes. Fundamentally, the racial categories, inequalities and hierarchies have tremendously shaped the United States since the nation was formed. Undeniably, the generation of the immigrants has attempted to negotiate the racial categories as well as the expression of racism, sometimes shifting the race meaning. However, such efforts have failed to eliminate its significance. In reality, the racism, discrimination, inequality and other forms of social injustices have endured the history of the United States. Such crimes have prevented the immigrants from achieving their American Dreams. A closer look at this history would reveal that the Asian Americans and the Latino Americans were some of the minority groups subjected to such atrocities. Thus, the historical experiences of the Asian Americans and the Latino Americans were significantly similar regarding the identity challenges, social, economic and political struggles. This paper, therefore, provides a discussion of the manner in which the experiences of these two groups were similar and the way such experiences have helped to experience shape the current times.

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Fundamentally, the Asian Americans, specifically the Chinese and the Latinos shared the same history of oppression. Both groups were often brought to the United States to offer the cheap labour. They were later denied particular civil and political rights and therefore increasing their susceptibility to exploitation and mistreatment in the process of providing their reasonable labour force. For the Chinese, this practice was much felt in the U.S coasts and has continued to this day in the sweatshops within many American cities on the east and the west coast. For the Latino Americans, these practices dominated the U.S-Mexican border. This led to an eventual loss of the basic protections or the emergency hospital services. Maybe because of the similar genealogy as the people who could provide cheap and easily exploitable labour, the two groups further demonstrated several commonalities regarding the ideological justifications and the legal methods applied to subject both the Asian Americans and Latino Americans to persecution and discrimination. In reality, both have been the victims of "Nativists", which has tremendously limited the foreign-born Americans. Besides, they have been tremendously depicted as the "foreign" irrespective of the generations they have lived in the United States.

Both groups came from nations of origin that had been the site of the imperialists' wars, invasions and the civil wars that were contributed primarily by the cold war. In some nation, the U.S involvement gave rise to severe imperialist aggression, and these include the Philippines, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Vietnam, Laos, Nicaragua, Korea, Chinese, Dominican Republic and most recently Colombia. In this sense, these groups were able to experience with the government of the United States even before they came as immigrants in the US. The fear of being treated not only as immigrants but also as the servants who were previously colonised in their home nation dominated the life of these two groups in the U.S.

Both the Asian Americans and the Latino Americans suffered collateral damage as a result of the Black-White Paradigm. Ideally, the discourse of the social justice concerning the issues that involve race has dominated the US. As a result, the majority of the theorists have termed it as the black/white paradigm and has functioned to control the racial classification as well as the racial politics in the United States. Most clearly, this has been portrayed in the design of the civil rights law. The former chair of the U.S Civil Rights Commission previously stated that America is composed of three nations, and these include the black, the white and another group of people who struggle to act in specific ways other than black to avoid the white supremacy sting. As part of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S constitution, the Abolished the slavery. However, the formulation of the Jim Crow Laws in the Southern Eastern States advocated for the ideas of "separate but equal" implying that in as much as all races were equal, they were supposed to be separate in location. This kind of separation would further involve the use of different facilities. While it is evident that the system, in this case, is regarded as the black-white paradigm, these terms of such system were extended to other immigrant and minority groups such as the Latino Americans and the Asian Americans, including the Chinese, Koreans, Indians and Vietnamese. Undeniably, Jim Crow Laws increased discrimination. The African-Americans, the Latinos and the Asian Americans were all subjected to the same social and political practices after that.

Both the Asian Americas and Latinos were subjected to severe racial exclusion practices. The horrendous treatment of the Chinese immigrants in the 1880s by the federal, state and the local governments further provided a bitter representation of the history of the United States. The infamous Chinese exclusion was implemented leading to the federalization of immigration regulations. Primarily, these laws were meant to bar all the immigration people with the ancestry from China. Those who violated these laws were severely punished. The Congress broadened the Chinese exclusion laws to ban the immigration from other Asian nations and restrict the migration of individuals of Asian Ancestry from any other country. For instance, the Gentleman's agreement prohibited the immigration from Japan. As part of these laws, the Asian Americans from China and Japan had revocation of their citizenship as well as being prevented from owning real property.

By the beginning of the 1850s, the young single were subjected to active recruitment as the contract labourers, miners, railroad builders, farmers, factory workers and the fishermen. All these events led to the "Chinese must go" movement that further contributed to the decline of Chinese from 39500 in 1882 to only 10 in 1887. A small number of Koreans immigrants further came TO Hawaii and then the mainland America. Not only did the Korean immigrants were subjected to racists exclusion in the United States, but also to the Japanese colonization at home. Some of the Koreans finally settled in the US as refugees and organised for the Korean independence both at home and in the U.S. In the same way, the victory of the United States in the Mexican-American War of 1848 significantly established the foundation for the discrimination and social injustices among the Latinos Americans especially those from Mexico. With the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, more than 55 per cent of the Mexican territory was lost to the United States. Those who decided to stay the new territory that was now under the United States were granted the U.S citizenship. However, the increase in the emigration process later led to the rise in the Anti-Latino sentiments. As a result of the Great Depression, more than 2 million Mexicans were forcibly removed from the country leading to the ultimate loss of job and citizenship. Colorado State even ordered the repatriation of anyone who spoke Spanish or who possessed a Latino ancestry to leave the state in 1936. At times, members of this group were subjected to improper criminal justice or trial compared to their white counterparts. For instance, A Mexican woman, Josefa Segovia, was hanged in 1851 for murder accusation of a white man. In fact, she was subjected to hanging by a vigilante mob without a proper trial.

Impacts of Asian American and Latino Americans in the Current Times

While it is evident that the current U.S administration, both the federal and the States government have attempted to integrate the immigrants especially those from the minority group into the systems, research has shown that majority of them have failed to achieve the American Dream. The previous experiences of both the Asian Americans and the Latino Americans concerning the historical social, political and economic injustices that they were subjected to has continued to affect and challenge their identity as the Americans. Notably, the American Dream that drew the original colonialists in addition to the different wave of immigrant throughout the American history is a dream for freedom. Broadly, it involved the idea of not being subjected to discrimination by their colour or background. However, these have not be achieved because of various reasons. Firstly, the black-white paradigm tremendously disempowered different racial and ethnic groups from being able to provide an appropriate definition of their own identity. Even in the current socio-economic and political climate, the Asian Americans, Latino Americans as well as other minority groups have failed to mark their differences and specificity beyond what could be captured within this limited space. Rather than having their identity described in addition to their social circumstances, these groups have had their descriptions foisted from outside.

Similarly, the Asian Americans and the Latino Americans have historically been ignored as well as subjected to a severe state of marginalisation in the U.SA public discourse relating to race and racism. This situation has significantly weakened the analysis of race and racism within the mainstream discussions. These two groups have recently been defined through de jure and de facto treatments as the non-whites. However, such description is done on a shallow basis because members of these groups must be included in the discussions to allow the development of more account. Finally, it has been difficult for all minority groups to embrace a coalition building aimed at advocating for their rights. The white supremacy in the United States has continued to keep the groups in conflict with each other, thereby denying them interests in the current power structure of the nation.

Bibliography

Lee, Stacey J., Eujin Park, and Jia-Hui Stefanie Wong. "Racialization, schooling, and becoming American: Asian American experiences." Educational Studies 53, no. 5 (2017): 492-510.

Takaki, Ronald. A different mirror: A history of multicultural America (Revised edition). eBookIt. com, 2012.