In “Assimilation” by Lisa Sun-Hee Park, Park raises the question of what it is meant for colored people by assimilating in America. She argues that assimilation is a very vague concept and there are many ways of defining this process. Even though America wants to assimilate minorities into their American culture, Park shows us that minorities are still treated exclusively when they have already shown adjustment to America’s modern society. So what does America really mean by assimilating?
“The privileged Asian Americans of today are not the same Asian Americans of a century ago.”(p.16) Asian Americans are seen as the minority best assimilated into the American culture according to research that they now enjoy the highest education, best jobs, and marrying white people. Although that is true, there is a flaw in the research because these “privileged Asian Americans” are represented by a “bifurcated immigration system that separates the ‘high skilled’ and the ‘low’.”(p.16) The Asian Americans a century ago are still being discriminated and are still at the bottom of the social status.
“Model minority” was a term that was given to Asian Americans because they were thought to be the minority that best assimilated to American culture. According to Pew Research Center, Asian Americans showed the most positive progress in economic and social status. Therefore, America wanted other minorities to follow the example of Asian Americans to assimilate. Another important term that Park mentioned was “racial anxiety”. According to Robert E. Park, he believed that assimilation was a solution to racial difference, which is a social problem still pertaining today. Although there are many obstacles such as prejudice and isolation that make it difficult for assimilation to be the only key solution.
In “Cold War Origins of Model Minority Myth” by Robert Lee, Lee talks about a couple consisting of an American soldier and a Japanese woman immigrant. The Japanese woman tried very hard to learn the American ways, yet many people protests against this interracial marriage and saw her as an foreigner. When a higher commanding officer force the soldier to leave her foreign wife, the soldier went against the order and the couple commit suicide. This story was told to support interracial marriage and go against the anti-immigration acts that was enacted during the time.
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