Racial Discrimination Against Asian American Students

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Table of Contents

Abstract
Introduction
Discussion
Recommended Ways of Addressing the Problem
Conclusion
References

Abstract

Racial discrimination against Asian American students has been common among many colleges in the United States. The perpetual foreigner stereotype has been popular in this country for years.

However, this research clearly shows that no one benefits from such negative environments. Every member of society has a role to play in the fight against this stigma. Students, administrators, the staff, and political leaders all have a role to play in promoting social integration and unity in the colleges.

Introduction

Background

Social identify and stigma are very common terms in many institutions of higher learning within the United States. According to Chan (2005), the issue of racial discrimination has persisted in the United States for years despite the efforts that have been put in place by several people and groups to fight it.

The racial identity is still used to define the possible character of groups of people instead of basing judgment of an individual’s character. In the United States, minority groups such as African Americans are always associated with crime, drug abuse, and unruly behavior.

This stigmatization is still evident in many colleges around the country. Asian Americans are some of the most affected groups when it comes to stigmatization on the basis of race. Some scholars have argued that Asian Americans are denied admissions into some of the Ivy Colleges even if they have the necessary qualifications that the Whites do not have (Chae & Walters, 2009).

Some of these Asian American students have complained that they do not get equal treatment at these colleges to what their Whites colleagues get in areas such as sports. Most of the games popular among Asian American students are rarely sponsored by most of the colleges in the United States.

Racial discrimination is very rife among the student community. College students always form academic or even social groups based on their racial backgrounds. It is common to see a study group purely made up of African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics, or Whites.

This happens because when learners reach the college level, they tend to have understood their identity based on the perceptions within the community. Young children in kindergarten and lower primary seem to have a very little problem with their racial background. At school, they mingle easily, play together, and find it easy to work as a group that is not defined by skin color, religion, or cultural beliefs.

According to Guerrero (2012), it would be normal for children at that young age to have a problem comprehending why some of them are Whites while others are of color. It is ironic that they find it easy to get along. At the college level, where they are expected to have understood their diversity, the issue of stigmatization strangely arises.

It means that the problem is within the community. As these youngsters grow, their minds are fed with racial sentiments that change how they perceive other communities. They end up being intolerant towards other racial groups, leading to a series of problems. In this paper, the researcher focuses on how this problem of racial discrimination against Asian students can be addressed.

Problem

The previous research clearly revealed that there is a racial discrimination problem in colleges that needs to be addressed needs to be addressed. The research focused specifically on racial discrimination against Asian American students in colleges. The perpetual foreigner stereotype is increasingly becoming popular in North America, especially in the United States.

The Americans have failed to embrace this group of students as part of their society. They still consider these students as foreigners who are only in the country for a very short period before they go back to their home countries.

This notion has made it difficult for this minority group of students to integrate successfully with the majority of other learners. A survey by Guerrero (2012) shows that grouping based on racial lines is becoming increasingly common in many colleges in the country.

This trend is very worrying because it is a recipe for chaos. When a student from one community has a problem with another from a different community, the problem easily turns into a communal affair. This means that a personal problem affecting two individuals can easily transform into a problem that affects the entire college community.

Chan (2005) says that cases of mob attacks closely linked to racial problems have been reported in many colleges across the country. Such cases are becoming common, and there is fear that the violent trend of responding to racial discrimination may intensify if care is not taken.

The problem of racial discrimination is not exclusively a student-student affair. According to Chan (2005), some schools’ administrators have also become racially biased in terms of admitting students. In a society where fairness and justice are some of the most important principles, it is expected that the admission of students to colleges should be purely based on merit.

That clearly tells the society, especially the student community, that in life, success is not defined by one’s race, religion, culture, or any other demographical factor but persistence, determination, and hard work. Telling them otherwise is like sowing a seed of discord that will one day destroy our society. This problem must be solved in order to have a peaceful and more successful American society.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to come up with policy recommendations that can be used in steaming out racial discrimination that has become very common in our colleges. It is clear that racial discrimination brings no success to any of the parties involved.

Everyone comes out a loser, and sometimes it may lead to serious effects if it is allowed to escalate. That is why the researcher seeks to develop measures, based on the information available in books and journals, which can help eradicate the problem completely.

Scope

The problem of stigmatization and discrimination is an extremely wide area that is beyond the scope of this study. According to Guerrero (2012), the truth is that even within the racial groups, discrimination is still a common problem. It is common to find cases where Asian American feels that he or she has more rights to country’s educational facilities than Asian students who immigrated to the country specifically for the purpose of a college education.

They consider these international students as foreigners who should not be given precedence over them. The same problem is common among Whites and African Americans. This is a vice that is deeply rooted in our community. Individualism makes it impossible for people to appreciate and tap the power of collectivism.

In this study, however, the scope was narrowed to racial discrimination against the minority Asian American students in colleges around the country. Anything beyond this scope will only be used as a supportive argument to further understanding of this material.

Discussion

According to Chan (2005), racial discrimination is one of the oldest vices within American society. It emerged from a caste system that was practiced in many parts of the world where there were the ruling class and the slaves.

When slavery was abolished in the United States, the perception towards the minorities as lesser citizens of this country did not change. Asian Americans are some of the minority groups that have suffered from racial discrimination.

This vice has been common in colleges and other institutions of higher learning. In traditional American society at a time when it was gaining independence, there were schools meant for the Whites and those that were meant for people of color (Dovidio, Gaertner, Niemann, & Snider, 2001).

However, such systems collapsed along the way, but some colleges have been blamed for having held onto the archaic principles that segregated against people of color. In the modern globalized society, there are so many forces that need a united effort from society. Racial discrimination is a negative force that hinders the ability of students to work as a unit and develop a practical solution to some of the major global concerns such as global warming.

According to Guerrero (2012), stakeholders such as administrators, parents, teachers, and politicians also have a role to play in the fight against racial discrimination. The administrators in all the colleges in the country should uphold integrity and fairness in all their activities.

When it comes to admitting students, there should be clear criteria that are used. The criteria should be seen to be fair and should be based purely on merit. To fight some of the claims about discrimination against Asian Americans and other minority groups, colleges should consider making their selection methods and outcomes public so that everyone can understand how they selected their students.

According to Ancis, Sedlacek, and Mohr (2000), most colleges such as Harvard and Yale University are currently admitting a large number of Asian students than ever before in their history.

However, these same Ivy Colleges are the ones accused of segregation when it comes to selecting students that they admit — making their selection process and pattern of admissions public may help in eliminating the wrong perception that the minority groups may have towards them. They will see that genuine efforts have been made by these institutions to ensure that their selection process does not overly benefit one community at the expense of others.

The lecturers and the entire staff members also have a role to play in fighting racial discrimination against minorities. They have to uphold integrity at all times. They should be seen to be fair in their statements and actions. They should be the ambassadors of peace and harmony in learning institutions.

They should also help learners to find strength in their diversity than negative ethnic animosity. They can do this by discouraging ethnic-based study groups. Politicians and other public figures should avoid making utterances that may be construed to stigmatize a section of the community.

Recommended Ways of Addressing the Problem

This research paper focuses on how to solve the problem of racial discrimination against Asian American students in college. It seeks to find a way where all the stakeholders will develop a strong urge to work together, play together and achieve success as a unit instead of spending a lot of time, energy, and resources fighting one another.

The aim is to find factors that bring people of different races together and use them to fight or ignore factors that bring differences. The aim is to bring the student community together in forums that focus on positive participation and integration. Based on the studies conducted, the following are some of the most appropriate activities that can be used to fight racial discrimination and promote integration.

Sports

According to Guerrero (2012), sport is one of the most popular social activities that bring people together irrespective of their racial background, religion, or ethnic practices. A good example of popular games in modern society is football. It knows no language, race, social status, religion, or any other demographical factors. All that it knows is how to work as a team to manipulate the opponents and score goals.

This is pretty much what life entails. Colleges around the country should promote various sports to ensure that all students are offered the opportunity to represent their schools at different games, including mixed martial arts that are very popular among Asian Americans.

The school team should be as inclusive as possible, and the aim should be to get awards for the school. It will be common to find the mixed martial arts are dominated by whites in a given college. However, the fact is that they will be fighting for their community.

When they go for championships and meet opponents who are also Asian Americans, each student community will be supporting their team. This makes it easy for students to appreciate their diversity and see it as a strength instead of regarding it as a source of difference.

The entire college community will be proud of their Asian American colleague wins a match. The credit will be given to the entire school other than a narrowly defined racial community. Similarly, when the Whites represent their school in a baseball game, the entire student community will be cheering them and hoping that they will bring success home.

At such moments, the community always forgets about the possible differences that they may have as they do everything to bring success home. A failure will not be considered as a failure of one, but the entire community. Success is also owned by everyone within the community. The spirit of teamwork id promoted as people realize that they are better placed to achieve success when they work together.

According to Chan (2005), racial segregation is always rife in environments where people have a lot of time and energy to engage in idle talks that are baseless and do not enhance their future success. When they have such idle time, they tend to focus on trivial issues that define them on a very narrow basis. Active involvement in sports may help in eliminating such problems.

When students take their extra time engaging in active sports, they lack time to engage in trivial talks that may drift towards racial segregation. In such games, they draw their strength from one another and learn to appreciate their differences. They get to understand one another better, hence eliminate wrong perceptions about various communities.

The Asians students will learn that contrary to popular belief, most African Americans are actually peace-loving people who are law-abiding and respects people around them. With such knowledge, these students get empowered. They get to learn that each person is unique and should be judged, not on the basis of their race or religion, but their character and competence.

They also get to empower people around them by helping them to overcome some of the common stereotypes. They get to sow a seed of unity within their teams, within the student community, and the society at large. As Guerrero (2012) says, creating a sporting community within schools also helps in eliminating the notion among a section of learners that they are targeted by the majority whenever bad things happen to one of them. They get to learn that they are in one community, and anything that happens to a single student, irrespective of their background, affects the entire community.

Scientific invention

According to Cabrera (1996), different students are gifted differently; hence, sporting can never be the only unifying factor that a student community can use. One of the major areas where students are finding commonalities is in scientific inventions and entrepreneurship.

Science is promising to define future life, and many students are keen to make significant contributions while they are in colleges. Colleges around the country should create an environment where students can engage actively in research and scientific inventions. Science congresses have been popular for the past several years. Students get to partner, not on the basis of their racial background, but on the basis of their knowledge of specific scientific concepts that can help them invent new ways of making life easy.

According to Ancis, Sedlacek, and Mohr, (2000), learners in college have also come to realize that the best stage of coming up with a new business venture based on technological inventions or creativity in social sciences is when they are in college. Some of the world’s best companies were developed by students while they were still in college.

Microsoft was developed by a group of students, and so was Facebook. When these students come together to form such firms, their main driving force is the special skills that individuals have, not their background. For instance, the students who founded Facebook were from diverse backgrounds.

Instead of considering their diversity as a factor that divides them, they found the strength it is and decided to come up with a business concept that has transformed the entire world. Their idea as young learners who were interested in nothing but making the world a better place has become one of the widely used tools in communication, besides turning them into billionaires and international celebrities.

It is important to note that the lead expert in this project was actually an Asian, a Jew. Jews are some of the minority groups who have also suffered from racial discrimination in this country. However, this did not stop Mark Zuckerberg, a Jew, from partnering with like-minded students from other socio-cultural backgrounds to come up with one of the most successful scientific innovations in modern history.

Science congress brings learners together. It creates an environment where they have to find solutions as a team. It promotes integration and allows learners to understand one another using a new lens other than the racial one, which is promoted by society.

Cultural festivals

According to Ancis, Sedlacek, and Mohr, (2000), different cultural practices from all over the world never cease to be a source of entertainment to various people around the world. The Indian culture, when it comes to marriage, dress code, celebrations, and many other social aspects, is unique. The Chinese also have their culture, especially on issues such as family ties and the Shaolin culture.

In fact, the Shaolin culture is common among number of Asian countries. One aspect of this culture that has become very popular across the world, and specifically in the United States, is the martial arts.

One of the first people to bring this culture to the larger American society, and indeed to the entire world, was Bruce Lee. Lee informed the entire world and the American community in specific that there are some cultural practices among the Asians that can be very popular even among the Westerners.

His skills in martial arts, as taught among various Chinese communities, earned him face in the United States. In him, society no longer saw a perpetual foreigner who should be making a trip back to his homeland in China, but an American hero. He became a celebrated figure, a personality that was admired by the young and old alike. He did this at a tender age of early twenties.

This is a clear demonstration that opening up and letting members of other societies understand the cultural practices of one community helps in the creation of an understanding.

It is, therefore, important for colleges within this country to organize cultural festivals where different communities are given the opportunity to share with others their beliefs and practices. As Chan (2005) says, this will promote integration among the learners. They get to understand one another beyond the perceptions of society.

Such cultural festivals also make it possible for members of different communities to share their practices. In many cases, cultural festivals have shown more commonalities than differences. This helps students to realize that they have a lot more in common than factors that make them different.

Community development

Many colleges are now focusing more on issues related to corporate social responsibility. Students are taking leading roles in undertaking various corporate social responsibility tasks. One of the major areas of community development where colleges are now actively engaged in is environmental conservation. Many colleges are now engaging their students in planting trees as a way of protecting the future of humanity.

Global warming is a real threat to human existence on earth, and college students understanding this better than other less educated members of society. When a college organizes such forums on a regular basis, they allow their learners to have a common goal that binds them together.

They realize that the future lies in their hands, and the only way of protecting it is to protect the environment. They get to understand that the world is under threat due to the emission of greenhouse gases. Such global problems are very binding. It makes them see one another from a different perspective.

When the world is completely destroyed due to environmental degradation, there will be no America for Americans, Asia for Asians, or Africa for Africans. This makes the learners rise above the petty racial politics that add no value to their lives.

Colleges are also participating in helping to improve the living standards of people with special needs. These people may be deaf, dumb, blind, crippled, or suffering from a terminal illness. Some of them may be members of the university community, while others may be outsiders.

Erbe (2014) says that when individuals work together to help special needs groups, they always achieve internal satisfaction for their acts of humanity. They feel that they have made a difference in the life of someone who was in dire need. By allowing learners from diverse backgrounds to work in such projects, they get to share such memories together.

It makes it have some memorable moments that they can share other than spending their time on debates about the racial background. This is another good way of promoting integration among college students.

Conclusion

Racial discrimination is something that should not be celebrated in this modern century. According to the discussion above, the only thing that racial discrimination has succeeded in achieving is sowing a seed of discord, creating animosity within the student community, and suffering among various stakeholders. No one comes out a winner in a system where racial discrimination is rife.

Coordination and collaboration in addressing common problems become almost impossible in such systems. Everyone becomes a loser. It is, therefore, important for all the stakeholders to play their role actively in the fight against this vice. Events such as sports, science congress, cultural festivals, and community development may help foster unity within the colleges.

References

Ancis, J., Sedlacek, W., & Mohr, J. (2000). Student Perceptions of Campus Cultural Climate by Race. Journal of Counseling & Development Spring, 78(1), 60-65.

Cabrera, A. (1996). The Role of Perceptions f Prejudice and Discrimination on the Adjustment of Minority Students of College. The Journal of Higher Education, 67(2), 119-148.

Chae, D., & Walters, L. (2009). Racial Discrimination and Racial Identity Attitudes in Relation to Self-Rated Health and Physical Pain and Impairment among Two-Spirit American Indians/Alaska Natives. American Journal of Public Health, 99(1), 144-150.

Chan, S. (2005). In defense of Asian American studies: The politics of teaching and program building. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Dovidio, J., Gaertner, S., Niemann, Y., & Snider, K. (2001). Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Differences in Responding to Distinctiveness and Discrimination on Campus: Stigma and Common Group Identity. Journal of Social Issues, 57(2), 167–188.

Erbe, N. (2014). Approaches to managing organizational diversity and innovation. Hoboken: Wiley & Sons.

Guerrero, A. (2012). Silence at Boalt Hall: The dismantling of affirmative action. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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