Asian American Review in Race and Social Formations

Class Project
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Class Project
Introduction
This paper will focus on Asian American interviews to unravel thematic issues surrounding race and social formations. The term Asian Americans refer to immigrants coming from all parts of Asia. It is a heterogeneous cluster of Asian Americans, which may share some standard features and has unique features that permeate different ethnic groups (Balgopal, 2013). 
I interviewed Chris, who is a 23 year American Chinese man, to get his experience in what it means to live in the U.S. Chris says he was born in Los Angeles by Chinese parents who had migrated to the U.S from Hong Kong. According to him, racial and identities raise many concerns for him. Chris says that despite the idea that he was born in America, he still retains the Chinese cultural values and practices, and he always connects with his family relatives in Hong Kong. He talks about a closely-knit Asian community in Los Angeles, which forms a basic social unit characterized by unique values and practice but reports that some elements of original Asian culture have been lost and replace with a bit of Americanization ideation. Asians in the United States experience discrimination interpersonally and across many institutional settings, including housing and health care. He finds life in the U.S quite challenging owing to the institution and racial discrimination and aggression.
From my interaction with Chris through the interview, I find that the American Asian community is a close social unit with distinctive cultural values, principles, and practices, but might have lost some Asian cultural heritage. However, Asian America faces challenges of systemic discrimination and racism.
Theme 1: Concept of Race and Racism among American Asian Communities
When I asked Chris about his race, he perceives himself as Asian or Chinese. I also asked him whether he enjoys his citizenship like any other American Citizen, which he responds that he belongs to minority groups. More often, he is treated and perceived as a ‘foreigner.’ Chris feels that the Asian communities in America are often discriminated against. For instance, they are unlikely to be treated like their whites counterparts in the healthcare system. In the United States, Asian Americans are often considered a threat to a nation that promoted a whites-only immigration policy. More often, they are stereotyped and discriminated against in workplaces.
The Asian Americans began moving to American in significant numbers during the California Gold Rush. The Chinese who migrated at such a time primarily came to do mining but later engaged in Transcontinental Railroad and agriculture (Guo, 2016). When jobs in these industries disappeared, Chinese ventured into manufacturing. In the early days, white Americans were anxious about losing their jobs due to the influx of Chinese people displacing them from jobs. The entry of the Chinese appeared to threaten American independence and freedom.as a result, in 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Acts, which restricted further access of Chinese into America (Guo, 2016). This history provides a snippet onto Asian community development and growth in U....