Identity and Belonging: Rethinking Race and Ethnicity in Canadian Society - Essay Example

Race and Ethni There are a number of issues which are very clear in the interview. The interviewee is a 25 year old immigrant who lives in San Jose area and works as a software testing engineer. She moved to the United States two years ago and was lucky enough, as she says, to have landed a job as soon as she arrived in the country. She is of Asian origin, coming from Taiwan which gives a good basis to look at the various social-cultural stereotypes associated with Asian people. This interview can be seen as a confirmation about the various theories of dominant and minority ethnic groups. School and Education In the United States, people of Asian origin are said to be better in school and get better grades than the average white person. This is seen to be as a result of the fact that Asian parents have more control on their children’s education and other matters in life. Because of this, American Asians are more able to control their children and motivate them towards achieving more in their academics as compared to white Americans. This is explained by the theory that Asians look at education in a very different view from the way white people do. Because formal education is seen as a way to create a better future by getting a well paying job, Asian parents pressure their children to excel in education so that they can have a better future. This belief that Asian parents are more likely to push their children to overachieve in their education can be detected in the interviewee’s responses to the interview questions. The interviewee admits that her parents were more pushy and assertive in terms of her education when she was growing up and that she had to live with her parent’s decision about her education. For instance, she gives her sentiment as to how she was forced to go to a private school which was far away from her home, ending up being separated from her friends who attended a local public school. This is despite the fact that at the beginning of the interview she admits that her parents are not traditional Asian parents. It can also be seen in terms of the fact that the interviewee admits severally during the interview that although she had done a post graduate degree in Taiwan, she did not do it because she had already identified what she wanted to do with her life but that it was just to get a college degree to help her get a job. This deep concern for education among people of Asian origin goes on to confirm the argument that they are more likely to push themselves and their children towards doing the more difficult courses in college in an attempt to get recognition among their peers. During the interview, this also comes out clearly where the interviewee states that her friends, most of whom are of Asian origin, are more likely to judge her based on her course major in college and also based on her annual income. This shows that Asians attach different meanings to such things as education and money from the meaning that white people attach to the same. In the same regard, it is necessary to understand the way the white people are likely to look at things is different from the way Asians people are likely to see the same. Work Ethic The work ethic for Asians and that of the white people is also seen to be very different. The interviewee admits to working extra hard compared to her colleagues. Asians are more likely to work harder in order to deal with two important issues which affect them. The first issue is the issue of the glass ceiling at the corporate environment. Asians, being a minority ethnic group and most of them being immigrants are more likely to face issues of discrimination in terms of their career development. One issue which explains why Asians work much harder in their jobs is that they work had in order to overcome the glass ceiling by showcasing their skills and their determination in order to get promoted. This also comes out in the interview as the interviewee admits to be a person who works very hard in her work. She says that she works too hard and that she never leaves her workplace in the evening until she has wrapped up that day’s work. This is unlike her white colleagues whom she claims always leave work as soon as time for going home comes. She also admits that she works hard so that she can get a promotion. However, later when asked about how she thinks the white people think about her, she gives a story of how the white colleagues at work once looked at her with suspicion until one of them was socially close to her enough to tell her that the rest of the people thought that she was a pretender and that she only worked hard in presence of the boss in order to be recognised and get promoted. In the interview, she claims that these allegations were false and that the colleagues were being insecure. She also says that she did not intend to get the promotion. This is a contradiction of the previous statement where she had admitted that she did that to be recognised and be promoted. Regardless of that, it also shows the kind of ethnicity that can affect people in the workplace in a highly diverse population like the US. This interview acts as a confirmation of the fact that the various stereotypes about the Asian ethnic group are very true. Asians have to work harder and be more educated in order to get a good job and in order for them to be able to live a better life. This confirms the theory of the dominant ethnic group which makes it easy for those belonging to these dominant groups to be able to easily have access to resources and to have better lives. A study of the history of society indicates that societies have always had a dominant versus minority status of the different groups (Singh &Patrick 50). Ethnic dominance helps those who are in the dominant group to be able to have more resources for themselves in expense of the minority groups. However, this issue of dominant ethnic group may also affect the dominant group as they seem to be more relaxed about life and may fail to take advantage of the various situations such as available education (Doane 375-397). The second factor which may make Asians to work harder, apart from the issue of cracking the glass ceiling is the fact that they amongst themselves have higher standards with which they judge each other. This competition among these minority groups is likely to affect the ways in which they look at education and work. Asians feel that they have to over-excel and families compete fiercely with each other. As comes out in the interview, the interviewee reveals that her friends are likely to judge her in terms of her job title, her academic credentials as well as her income. This pressure from within the cultural setting leaves no room for relaxing and therefore the individual feels a constant need to excel. The interviewee also revealed a number of important issues which go on to reinforce the dominant ethnic group theory. On answering the question on whether she has ever been treated with prejudice while in the United States, she gives two examples of how she has been treated with prejudice while in a restaurant. Of importance is the fact that the interviewee points out that this kind of prejudice is more likely to happen in areas where the population is predominantly white and rich. She gives an examples of the ways in which she was treated in a restaurant where the waiter was openly looking down on her. She says that in this particular case, the waiter did not say hello to her as she did to the rest of the customers who were white. She also gives a second instance where a waiter pretended not to understand her order despite the fact that it was in the restaurant’s menu. It looks like the dominant ethnic groups are always having their way and the minorities may have a harder time fitting in to the picture whether it is culturally, academically or in the corporate environment (Cross, 298). This can also be seen in the fact that the interviewee also admitted that over 90% of her friends are of Asian descent like her. This is an indication that it is harder for minority ethnic groups to be assimilated into the majority dominant ethnic culture and there is a clear line that separates the minority groups such as Asians from the dominant ethnic group, regardless of education levels and career lines. The interviewee also indicates that it is true that dominant ethnic groups are able to use their power of dominance to use resources unto themselves and to be able to have advantage over the other non-dominant ethnic groups. The issue of the dominant ethnic groups is a tricky one because it seems to re-propagate itself in terms of the fact that the non-dominant minorities act in a way that gives even more power for the dominant ethnic groups to be able to continue being dominant. According to Downing and Husband (126), in any society, minority cultures should be given their autonomy in terms of the way they run their social and cultural affairs. The traditional view that a state is made of one social culture is misleading because individual cultures want to continue having a continued practice of their cultural practices (Pinder 131). Asians are more likely to have more education than white people and still work lower jobs in the workplace as compared to their white colleagues. This can also be seen in the interview as the interviewee, despite having a graduate degree thinks she is inadequate and not fit for a promotion. Yet, it could be possible that some of the people she works with are not as educated as she is. This is an indication of the kind of uneven distribution of resources which happens where there is an issue of dominant ethnic group. The minority groups can always feel that they are scared of the status quo and that they are intimidated by the majority or the dominant ethnic group. This feeling of intimidation is likely to affect the behaviour of the minority groups. For instance, Asians may feel that unless they do extra, they will not stand a chance against their white counterparts. This may explain why minority groups such as the Asian are more aggressive as compared to the white. Minorities have to look for ways in which to improve their status and to make sure that they are at par with the dominant ethnic group. There are other issues which emanate from the interview which may go on to confirm the issue of ethnic minority behaviour. Ethnic minorities such as the American Asians are said to be more considerate of the more serious academic life of their children as opposed to their child’s extracurricular activities. Asians are more likely to invest more towards their child’s academic needs as opposed to their social needs. The interviewee in this case confirms this because she says that her parents were more eager to send her to a private school and spend more on her schooling as opposed to sending her to a nearer public school which would cost them less and at the same time enhance the child’s social environment. This also confirms the theory that Asians are more likely to have special reading spaces for their children and invest more on academic materials for their children compared to whites of the same socioeconomic power. At the same time, Asians are said to be more likely to still concentrate on their child’s academic life even in cases where they invest in the child’s non-curricular activities such as music and games. This also goes in line with the explanation that Asians feel that they have to be better in the academic world and that they have to increase their output in order to make sure that they stand a better chance in life just like the majority dominant ethnic group, that is, the white people. In this case, there are a number of issues which must be looked at in order to understand how the dominant ethnic groups affect the behaviour and psychology of the minority ethnic groups. Although some give the explanation of the fact that the dominance of the white ethnic group leads to the minority groups feeling the pressure to succeed, there may be other explanations. For instance, the reason Asian students are more likely to excel in school above white students is the fact that their parents are more likely to be more educated than the children of the white parents. The more educated the parents are, the more their children are likely to be successful in school. This is because educated parents are more likely to understand their child’s academic needs and also be able to meet these needs. However, this second explanation of the reason for Asian students doing better than the white students can be seen as an extension of the first one because the reason why the American Asian parents are more educated and more socioeconomically successful than the white parents can only be explained through the first explanation above. Regardless of this, Asian children are more likely to be motivated to become better in their academics that are the white ones. It is also argued that Asian children are likely to have a declining performance in their academics as they grow up. This explanation makes sense due to the fact that the main reason why American Asian children perform better in school is that their parents push them. In regard to this, as the child grows up and becomes more independent such as when they go to college, they gain more independence from their parents and they can do whatever they want to do. This can also be seen as being confirmed by the interviewee who says that she enjoys her freedom now that she is grown and independent. She also says that she was determined to have a job so that she could stop using her parent’s money. Although she gives other reasons as to why she wanted to depend on her salary as soon as she got to the USA, a closer analysis can reveal that it was much about her own independence from her parents as this would then give her autonomy in her own affairs. This is unlike within white families where the parents could still be financially supporting their child and allow them to have autonomy in their life. Conclusion In this interview, the various theories and explanations of the dominant majority and minority ethnic groups seem to be confirmed. It is clear that both Asian Parents and their children have more motivation for succeeding academically as well as in their career. For the American Asian children, they have to give in to their parents’ pressure to perform excellently in school. This pressure by the parents is motivated by the fact that the parents believe that the only way that their child will succeed in life is by not just excelling in school, but by actually being way better than their white counterparts. The adults are motivated to be better in their careers because they feel that they have to do this in order to overcome the glass ceiling issue. These factors act as very strong motivation factors for Asian minorities. Works Cited Bolaria, Singh & Hier, Patrick. Identity and Belonging: Rethinking Race and Ethnicity in Canadian Society. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2006. Print Cross, Malcolm. The Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Volume 1. New York, NY: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2000. Print Doane, Ashley. “Dominant group ethnicity in the United States: The role of ‘hidden’ ethnicity in intergroup relations.” The sociological quarterly 38. 3 (1997): 375-397. Print Downing, John. & Husband, Charles. Representing Race: Racisms, Ethnicity and the Media. Boston, MA: SAGE, 2005. Print Pinder, Sherrow. The Politics of Race and Ethnicity in the United States: Americanization, De-Americanization, and Racialized Ethnic Groups. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Print Read More