Asian-Americans and Poverty

1. Asian-Americansand Poverty By Alan Christopher, Peter Lawson, Joe Schlotterer, and Ezra Whateverthehellyournameis

2. Asian-American History • Asians began immigrating to the United States in the mid to late 1800s, most of them from China, which had become unstable and could no longer keep its citizens from leaving. • Asian populations skyrocketed in the West as Chinese came to find work. Many prospected for gold, while others worked on railroads, including the Transcontinental Railroad. Chinese railroad workers. White Americans, fearing they would be overrun by poor Asians willing to labor for lower wages, passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1888 to stop Chinese immigration. A similar act, the Immigration Act of 1924, discriminated against Asians in general.

3. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, bringing the US into WWII in 1941, the American people feared that Japanese-Americans might defect to their origins and sabotage the US war effort from within. • Therefore President Roosevelt passed Executive Order 9066, ordering all Japanese-Americans rounded up and put in internment camps. 110,000 Japanese-Americans were interned from 1942-1944. Crystal City internment camp.

4. The conditions of these camps were often deplorable, and in the years that the Japanese-Americans were stuck there they often lost their houses or their businesses and had to start over again. • Ironically, Hawaii, the state with the highest Japanese-American population interned the fewest number of Japanese-Americans, and had no accounts of Japanese-American sabotage in Pearl Harbor or any of their other naval bases. White and Japanese-American children saying the Pledge of Allegiance together before deportation. A Japanese-American put up this banner after Pearl Harbor. He had to sell his store before he was deported.

5. History has been kinder to Asian-Americans since WWII. In 1952 the McCarron-Walter Immigration Act forbade race as a discriminating factor in US immigration and citizenship, allowing Asians to come to America in greater numbers than before. In 1988 President Reagan officially apologized for the internments of WWII and awarded reparations to the families of those interned, though the payments didn’t come close to paying off what was lost. • During the Vietnam War, many of those with ties to the South Vietnamese government became refugees as they were forced to flee, many coming to America, where they became skilled, hard-working members of society. The old immigration station on Angel Island, where one million Asian immigrants passed into the US and could be held for days before entering, was shut down and a new one opened in San Francisco. President Reagan writing the order for reparations to the families of surviving internees.

6. Asian-Americans in Culture • A few decades ago, especially in poor, racially-divided areas, Asian-Americans weren’t really sure where they stood. It was whites against blacks, and they fit into neither group. Nor were they Asian—they thought of themselves as American, and to this day most Asian-Americans are born in America. Yet they are caught in the middle, having removed themselves from Asian culture but still seen as Asian by Americans. For this reason, they are more likely to cling to family and other Asian-Americans, limiting interactivity with other groups and integration into American culture. Many also find it hard to overcome the language barrier— learning enough English to do well.

7. Many Asian-Americans are forced to overcome stereotypes about their heritage in order to gain acceptance in American society. Here, some influential Asian-Americans talk about how being an Asian-American sets them apart from mainstream American culture, both in good ways and in bad. Another prominent Asian American today is Bobby Jindal, the first non-white governor of Louisiana and second Asian-American governor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWey0hhi3Dw&feature=fvw

8. Asian Americans in Poverty • Of all the American ethnic groups, Asian-Americans are the richest, with a median household income of $64,238 and a poverty rate of 10.3%. • This is in part because 47% of adult Asian-Americans work in management, professional and related occupations, such as financial managers, engineers, and other positions less vulnerable to layoffs in times of economic turmoil.

9. It seems that Asian-Americans are growing more comfortable with their status. From the 14.9 million US residents who described themselves as Asian-American in 1996 (5% of the US population), numbers are rapidly increasing, and it is predicted that 33.4 million people will describe themselves as Asian-Americans in 2050 (49% more than the actual growth of that population in that time). • Asian-Americans take education • very seriously. 49% of adults have • bachelor’s degrees, and 86% have • a high school diploma. • They have founded the Asian • American Federation to improve • quality of life for all Asian-Americans.

10. A Model Minority • Asian-Americans have been called “the model minority” because they exemplify all the traits traditionally seen as being important to Americans—educated, hard-working, and dedicated to family. Today there are many Americans of Asian ancestry in respected places in our culture, marking how the minority has risen above discrimination into a place of acceptance in American society.

11. There are still poor Asian-Americans, however. These are overlooked generally because of the overwhelming success of certain Asian ethnicities. For example, while 88% of Japanese-Americans have a high school education, only 33% of Hmongs do. Furthermore, many households have as many as eight children, and have trouble succeeding because they speak poor English. While as a general group Asian-Americans seem to be succeeding, there are still many problems there that need to be sorted out. As always, the problem is just getting the word out about poverty.

12. http://itcphotos.utsa.edu/photos/098-0953.gif • http://www.jamsj.org/newsletter/Fall07/reagan.gif • http://www.chinasmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/pretty-asian-girl.jpg • http://www.aalead.org/content/Report%20-%20Invisible%20Americans.pdf • https://www.lssu.edu/faculty/jswedene/images/chinese-railroad.jpg • http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/JapaneseAmericansChildrenPledgingAllegiance1942.jpg • http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/JapaneseAmericanGrocer1942.jpg • World Book 2008. A-1. Chicago: World Book, Inc., 2008. Print. • Lee, Joan. Asian Americans. New York: New Press, 1991.