Asian Americans:
The Negative Effects of Stereotyping and Discrimination Throughout American history, there have many cases of stereotyping and discrimination against a particuar group based on their race or ethnicity. It started as earlier as when the English colonists, who came to North America, bought African slaves to work for them. Africans were treated as less than human and were given sterotypes that precedent in American history. The precedent was that people of diffent races or immigrants (outsiders) that are not European (white) were not as entitled. Futhermore, immigrants of different races or ethnicities were automatically given lower place in society and a "reason" or stereotype as to why they were not equal. For the most part, they were just not treated equal and discriminated because of cultural ignorance leading to barriers. This has been a major stain in American history and it ultimately has limited its full potential as we are supposed to be the land of the free and exemplify the Declaration of Independence's claim that all men were to be treated and created equal. A perfect example of this problem would be the immigration of Asian Americans into American throughout the 20th and 21th centuries. Asian American came to American because it provided them the opportunity to have a successful life. However when they arrived, they faced many obstacles not because of their abilities but race. All this did was retard the growth and maturity of American society along with provoking many ethnic cinflicts. In this paper, I will summarize the origins and formation of ethnic identity in American society. Also, reflect on how it affected Asian Americans and their pursuit to success in America along with solutions to the problem of racial stereotyping in America. When Asian American arrived in America, they were given a social identity. This identity was place on them before they made in impact in America and it consisted of the knowledge that Americans had on Asian people. This social identity was based on a situational perspective meaning that their identity was based on the current state or situation of society (enter citation). Also, the boundaries of that social identity is constantly being renegotiated, revised, and redefined, depending on specific situations and set of circumstances that each individual or ethnic group encounters. However at that time in America, the progression of the Asian Americans social identity was halted because Americans were culturally ignorant of Asian people. They only knew what they saw in the media or what they generated from outsider's perspective of the major Asian traditions but nothing in reality. All that the Americans knew about Asian Americans was assumed and apply to all Asian people. Futhermore, due to the lack of effort to learn and experience Asian culture and the different ethnicities within it, stereotyping became the alternative. Within the situational perspective, there are several sub-theories about how social identity is formed and reformed, shaped and reshaped. One common example is the ethnic identity of Japanese American after World War II. Many Japanese American adults who were imprisoned during WWII initially discarded their identity after the end of war, to avoid any association, shame, or embarrassment with being imprisoned (Insert citation). However, after movement to demand compensation and redress for this injustice developed in the 1980s, many felt a newly resurgent sense of being Japanese American as they united to fight for an official apology and reparations from the federal government (insert citation). This serves as one solution to the problem of stereotyping in America. Sometimes, it requires the victims to takes control of the situation and bring the change they are looking for. We've seen example of this multiple times in American history with big movements like the Civil Right movement were African an Latino
