Asian American: Diversity in the United States, Racial, Ethnic & Cultural History

Diversity in the United States
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Diversity in the United States
Introduction
Diversity is the coming together of people of different races, nationalities, religions, and genders to form a united society. Moreover, diversity does not exist because of existence of different groups of people, but the differences within the same group of people. Therefore, diversity includes unique physical appearance and opinions each person has. This paper discusses United States of America as a diverse society.
United States Diversity
Cultural diversity does not exist by virtue of racial groups because they are too generalized to be of any value. Naylor (1999) argues that no all blacks think or behave alike, nor all whites. He further argues that black people do not share a culture since there are many different cultural groups represented among the black people. This notion is also manifested in the generalization of ethnic groups in America. Americans refer to Hispanics; Asian Americans even Native Americans as ethnic groups. However, there is no Native American culture, nor Asian American culture and so forth. The inherent suggestion is that all members of these groups share the same patterns of beliefs demonstrates basic ignorance of most Americans about the rest of the world. From Naylor’s (1999) work, I learnt that each American individual is set apart by cultural connections and identities in their lifetime. Each culture plays a vital role in the social fabric of the nation because of their distinct set of beliefs and behaviors. Diversity in the United States does not mean that it does not have a national culture that is shared by all Americans; it means that America has a unique nation-state culture. In fact, diversity is all around us, and without our differences, the world would be boring. Diversity helps learn new things and appreciate one another for who they are.
In order to learn from one another through collaboration and cooperation, it is important to understand our own cultural history to help dismiss negative stereotypes and personal prejudices people may have towards a group of people. Being an Asian American, I have come to learn that, we are about 19.5 million, almost 6% of the total US population (Lee, 2015). Asian Americans represent communities from China, Japan, Korea, Filipino, India, and Pakistan among others. Asian Americans is one of the fastest growing groups in North America. The group is highly diverse because it includes many ethnic group and languages. The fast Asian Americans were born of Chinese Filipinos who originally migrated to Mexico. In 1840s many Chinese as well Japanese, Korea’s workers moved to Hawaii. They worked in mines and railway constructions and were mistreated and denied citizenship even by birth. They were isolated and forced to live in camps where they formed their own self-sufficient communities. The conditions for Asians Americans improved after World War II. Later their population increased because of immigrants from Southeast Asia following the Vietnam conflict.
A society that is diverse benefits in several ways because it values and respects the differences of its people. With that, the society can then be able to recognize th...