ethnic survey

Are you?

A)  Male

B)  Female

What is ethnicity?

A)  Your physical appearance (eye color, skin color, hair color)

B)  The given population of people in a certain culture

Is there just one human race?

A)  Yes

B)  No

Which group do you identify with?

•A)  Hispanic

•B)  Latino

•C)  Black or African American

•D)  Native American

•E)  Asian

•F)  Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander

•G)  South Sea Islander

•H)  Caucasian or White

•I)  Mixed or Other

•Does racism still exist today?

•A)  Yes

•B)  No

•C)  Only within certain groups

Female Attitudes towards ethnicity

Frequency	Frequency	Percent      Valid%	Cumulative Percent

Valid	1.00	2	6.3	7.1	7.1
	3.00	5	15.6	17.9	25.0
	4.00	7	21.9	25.0	50.0
	5.00	14	43.8	50.0	100.0
	Total	28	87.5	100.0

Male Attitudes towards ethnicity

	Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent

      

Valid	1.00	3	9.4	9.4	9.4
	2.00	1	3.1	3.1	12.5
	3.00	3	9.4	9.4	21.9
	4.00	8	25.0	25.0	46.9
	5.00	17	53.1	53.1	100.0
	Total		32	100.0	100.0

"Browning of America"

We have a growing colored population in the United States. Good or bad? At the moment, the answer to this question isn't a definite one. A lot of people see different attitudes towards immigration and social justice moving the nation into a positive, bright future. This country is likely going to take a progressive stance on what or who an American is. I think it's a good, in a way, that we'll be moving in a direction where the country will get to reevaluate itself and the principles its meant to uphold. The idea of being an "American" seems more open-ended nowadays, provided that the ancestors of today's Native Americans were the first to arrive in this land and children of immigrant families (past and present) feel very absorbed in US society. With more colored people in the United States, many of them will take up a position in politics, business, technology, law, and education in order to create a stable, equal system that meets everyone's needs. The "browning of America" notion does, however, have some negative aspects to the racial future of this country.


In the next 10 - 20 years, the urban areas of the United States will experience a 50% increase or higher in the African, Asian, and Hispanic populations. While this diversification will ensure a better future for America, we still have to consider the issue of current immigrant families in poverty, their kids with little formal education, and a great lack of literacy amongst immigrants. There's no way this country will continue to prosper if the future majority of people are poorly educated or lack any job experience that can not only help the individual workers, but the economy as a whole. Republicans argue that these people and their supporting Democratic party will only diminish this country's future since they don't value American ideals the same way whites do. This is untrue and insulting since no one has to be white to love this nation and being a Democrat doesn't mean you're without American values. Another issue we'll have to take account for is the rise of white supremacist groups, who are more than likely to cause violence and inflict harm upon people of color. There will be difficult and challenging problems down the road similar to the ones the United States has dealt with before.Whatever the obstacles or changes may be, my hope is that we reach the bar that our American principles have set for us and we don't repeat the mistakes of our pasts.    

Chapt 17

In this reading, this chapter updates its reader with the latest data on immigration to the United States from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Out of all the other eras of people emigrating to this country, my impression of this one is that it's a relatively, unknown period of immigration consistency and inconsistency within the United States government. Up until this point, the most popular era of people coming to the United States is during the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. A number of the issues discussed in this chapter are still faced today, especially the big one involving US-Mexican border. What was interesting to me was the distinct border systems between the United States's two neighbors, Canada and Mexico.

Bear in mind, this information is dated back from the very late 1980s to roughly 2001, so the data presented is representative of its own time, but still relevant to certain extant today. The US government's INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) has no track record of immigrants from either Canada and Mexico. Considering these two nations share our borders, it's amazing how it's not just the Mexican immigrants we losing count of, but we are doing as poor of a job keeping track of the many Canadian immigrants here as well. The one distinction between how we manage the entries of Canadians and Mexicans is clearly discriminatory. People from Canada can travel into the United States for business or pleasure without any restrictions for six months and no visa. Mexicans coming into this country must apply for border crossing cards and can continue to come here, as long as the immigrant is within twenty five miles of the border and doesn't stay longer than seventy two hours. The media in August 2001 provoked a message of anger and bitterness towards the discrimination targeted at Mexican trucks due to traffic regulations imposed by Congress, which differ greatly from the regulations placed on Canadian border crossers. To this day, we still don't know how many Canadian and Mexican immigrants are in this country.

This is just one of the INS's poor qualities of creating a just, legal immigration system that satisfies the United States government and the people entering this nation. In 1998, another issue provides testament to their ineffectiveness in the case of classifying certain people as immigrants and others nothing what so ever. At that time, opening the doors to certain immigrants was based only on their work preferences (later statistics indicate their families were not even admitted as immigrants and half of these workers were mostly trainees). These immigrants were divided up into two main groups: 1) Professionals who were greatly needed for jobs such as computer programming, medical work, and information sciences, and 2) Agricultural and service workers of various types, who have very little education and are less likely to assimilate into American society. Another sub group of immigrants that are overlooked quite a bit are the so-called millionaire immigrants, who obtain preference visas on the condition that they are allowed the choice to pick where they want their money invested. Usually, this money is spent in economically depressed areas where many immigrants reside. It's nice to know there are a few wealthy people in this world, who invest money into a worthy cause of helping your own people out of the slums. 

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has always been one of those fun holidays for my family and I. It's that time of the year when we connect with each other, talk about our lives, and discuss the events or issues on the rise these days. We're not a religious family, but since my sisters and I were little, we have always shared the things we are thankful for. The focus for our family on Thanksgiving is to maintain our relationships with each other and to know that there are always some things we should give thanks to. These things range from family to something in our personal lives that positively affected us in some way. I don't remember this as much, but when we were kids, my sisters and I would place paper-made feathers on the turkey with different messages of the things we're thankful for. Nowadays, one of my sisters will come home every other year or so to celebrate with us. As much as we would love to have them both home, my parents recognize my sisters have their own lives and are bound to make others plans.
As far as traditions go, there are only a couple customs my family practices on Thanksgiving. Some years we'll have turkey with gravy, potatoes, and vegetables, while on other Thanksgivings, my parents will cook up a different recipe for that night. My dad carves up the turkey and my mom will make a couple special desserts for afterwards - both which are longtime Thanksgiving traditions for men and women. Other than that, we're generally laid back about how we want to celebrate Thanksgiving. Once, my dad was on the board of the San Jose Family Shelter and the family had three Thanksgiving dinners there with the shelter's residents. It was a nice treat to dine with those less fortunate than us, as I'm sure it was for them to celebrate Thanksgiving with the people who provided a roof over their families' heads.   

Chapter 16

History, as they say, is bound to repeat itself at one time or another. In the 1980s, new immigration reforms started attracting more people to the United States, stirring a lot of upset citizens across the country. This was the first time since the mid-1920s that Americans went from creating a society, void of poverty and despair, to a reexamination of their nation's immigration policy. Around this time, the Iranian hostage crisis had taken hold on people who worked in the American embassy, pushing the United States to set further limits on immigration.

In March 1981, the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy was created to enhance an early United States tradition of barring immigrants from entering this nation using a literacy test and US history test. Five years later, the new Immigration Act was passed by Congress to make some modifications to the drafts of the 1911-20s legislation that was originally set out to reverse American immigration policies. In a way, the new commission of 1981 was dominantly liberal whereas the 1911 body was conservative. The main head in the1980s of this new group, Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, a world champion of an honorary degrees collection of over a hundred, made it the commission's goal to "walk the fine line between honoring America's tradition of being a land of opportunity for the world's downtrodden and dealing with today's harsh realities." Hesburgh's and most of his staff's attitudes were aimed at maintaining the United States' economic prosperity and welfare by strengthening or regaining complete control of its borders. While this popular notion is favored by politicians and citizens alike, even today, this country hasn't taken the issue of our borders seriously enough. It's one of the reasons why we can't find those who are here illegally since there's not a lot emphasis in Washington on creating more restrictions on crossing our borders. Hesburgh's church has a long tradition of defending immigrant rights; however, Hesburgh himself has taken the stand on promoting more restrictive immigration so as to not create a "disservice to our poor and unfortunate" who are desperate for work in this country. Others have argued the exact opposite of this argument.

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith and members of Reagan's Economic Advising Council argued that since American government power is small, the regulating of immigration has lessen enough for more people to come in without being caught. To add, illegal immigrants don't necessarily hurt the economy or American workers; rather they help to increase job opportunites and wages through hard work and their personal investments of starting a better life in the United States. Overall, the efforts these immigrants put into their jobs not only benefit them, but the nation as a whole. The one obstacle, however, is the sentiment from Americans, who argue that many of this country's historical immigrants (Germans, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, etc.) have not helped in improving the standard of living, but lowered it quite a bit. This debate may not end any time soon, but as a nation, we definitely must look into how we should manage our borders, as well as create some kind of program that determines which immigrants can become citizens and who are just here for work or an education.                

Boat People

This poem couldn't be any further from the reality of Haitians longing to start over in the United States. Each of the verses provides some meaningful, yet interesting context on the situtations many of these immigrants had to endure while entering or assimulating into American society. A few verses distinguish the Haitian outlook of the term "Boat people" from the way Americans use it. For example,


"We fight a long time with poverty
On our islands, the sea, everywhere
We never say we are not boat people"


signifies the attitude of most Haitians have on the basis of them being a "boat people" within their rights. In this case, they are fighting for their way of life at home and in America. The 'boat,' in a way, is the metaphor of heading out into the surrounding waters or land in order to achieve that goal. However, when their ancestors in Africa were captured and thrown into the slave ships, the Haitians of African descent didn't see themselves as "boat people" in the sense that they were forced against their wills onto these large boats. The poem continues on justifying that Haitian immigrants are not all drug smugglers or trouble makers, but people who are here with "courage and strength to work." They are in this country for reasons similar to any other American's - freedom and most importantly, to prove to Congress that Haitians are people with the same needs and desires that everyone else has.   

Chapter 15

While the United States has numerously tried to keep certain groups of foreigners out, there have been other immigrants (excluding those from Western Europe) that Congress has worked to allow into this country. Towards the end of this chapter, it's discussed how the process of opening America's gates to Soviet Jews was in full swing during the late 20th Century. The attitude of this 1970s movement was a stirring contrast to the attitudes most Americans had towards Jewish immigrants - before and after the Holocaust. A definite push factor in this massive immigration is that many of these Jews were getting out of the Soviet Union to escape persecution from the Russians. Yet, a number of these peoples' original plans were set towards Israel, where they could re-establish themselves and their way of life. The ones that ended up going to the United States had it a bit easier for a couple of reasons.

Provided that Jewish families were already settled in the States before the '70s, every one of these local communities pitched in to sponsor the newly arrived Soviet Jews. These local towns were scattered throughout the country, but the main concentration of Jewish immigrants was Brighton Beach at the very southern tip of Brooklyn, New York. While other communities rallied to get Jews out of Russia and into America, as the same time, most of these immigrants were young, educated men who had no desire to lead a religious life. A bit ironic since many Jewish immigrants originally came to the United States to freely practice their customs without being persecuted. Another ironic twist to Jewish emigration was the emergence of glasnot (Reagan and Bush presidencies) that allowed more immigrants than what the United States was able to keep track of in the late 1980s. The State Department decided that the best way to lower the numbers of Soviet Jews into the United States was by determining if each immigrant possessed enough fear towards the Soviet Union. One could stay the easier it was to leave Russia, the harder it was to come into the United States.

Cuba, being a historical asset and brief enemy of the United States, sparked a great mass of emigration into this nation. From this reading, I could see how Thomas Jefferson and Southern politicians saw this island as a potential site for American productivity and prosperity In the sequence of events from Cuba's independence in 1898 to Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959, waves of Cubans entered the States - many of them as early actually as the early 19th Century where Cuban cigars were popular products among Americans. Cuban immigration declined for a time after Cuba was freed at the end of the Spanish - American War, but it peaked once again in the 1950s which made Miama, Florida the center of Cuban America. At the same time, political tensions were rising, sending more people into the United States than ever before. Even with Castro in power, airline travel continued between the two countries until the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. For three years following this event, airline planes didn't to or from Cuba. Many of these Cuban immigrants managed to escape to Spain and Mexico, but as soon as the crisis with Castro's government began to ease a bit, another great mass of them entered the United States once again.