I don't know if I've ever come across this specific topic anywhere before. Yes I'm sure I've read or heard or spoken bits and pieces of it previously touching on one thing or another. However this topic has never been "the focus."

One of the reasons why I'm curious is because I've been a citizen of this country for quite some time now (yes I'm "old" but not a geriatric--so back off kiddo! lol). And I really feel like everyone is my "brotha and sista" regardless of the person's background. I guess what I'm saying is I feel very American because I know what country I live in and who my neighbors are like right next door and beyond. And my colleagues and friends are very diverse. And these are all things I have wanted in my life. What is your experience and how well do you feel you have integrated with other Americans in the places you live? I'd like to hear your perspective.

Oh gee - I guess I'm first, so I'll take a stab at it. Personally, I feel myself to be very Americanized. I was born here, raised here, and lived my whole life here. Outside of perhaps a total of a few months, all my life has been spent in the United States. I do not speak the language of my parents, even a little bit. If my parents are speaking in their native tongue to each other, I'm pretty much just as lost as I would be listening to a conversation between two people speaking Turkish or Swahili. I like football, and porno and books about war (apologies to Denis Leary) and I believe I have adopted the typically American virtues of hard work, fairmindedness, justice, and not taking sh*t from anybody.

I have had the fortune to be born in and live in California, which is very diverse and where Asian-Americans are relatively large in number, and thus are pretty well integrated into the society at large. If I lived in say, an East Coast city where the Asian population was very small and very cloistered, my outlooks would probably be very different. I believe that Asian-Americans in general have integrated fairly well into society. A big factor in this is that many Asian immigrants to this country (at least the waves of immigration since WW2) were mostly from the educated classes, and thus, when they came to this country, were able to step in and work as professionals and develop a middle-class identity for the Asian-American population in general. Asian Americans did not come to this country as a huge, uneducated, low-skilled labor force whose descendants had problems with crime and unemployment.

Unfortunately, due to the restrictions placed on immigration from Asia by this country's government in the first half of the 20th century, the Asian-American population remains artificially small, especially in comparison to the immigrant communities from Europe. This has had the result that Asians are still very few in number, and are mostly congregated in the large coastal cities. An Asian family moving to the rural interior of the country might have a more difficult go of it than an Irish, or Italian, or Jewish family.

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Hi to All, I am new to this website.....I am glad to have found this site for AA's to openly discuss issues that concern their daily lives here in the USA. I guess I will give my 2 cents worth on this particular topic.

I immigrated to this country when I was only 6 y/o from HKG. I first landed in a small all-white ciy in Indiana....except for our sponsor family. It was definitely a wake up experience as far as arrving into a new and foreign country where you are basically the only Asian family in the town and the entire school. At the time our sponsor family lived in a better part of town (as I am told later by my parents) and therefore a different school system. I don't know which part was worse, getting my ass kicked every morning by the same 3-4 white boys, or teh daily and constant ridiculing from the kids at school every single day. I can actually count on one hand the number of kids that accepted me as a person and a friend.

Fast forward 30+ years later and I am now living in a very nice and diverse town here in NJ about 40 mins from the hart of NYC. My family finally made its way to NYC in the early 70's.....it was like a culture shock for me because when I first arrives I said to myself, "Wow...look at all the Asian people everywhere, in the streets, in the schools?". I thought I had died and gone to heaven.....I was truly happy for the first time since my arrival to the USA. I lived and was raised in NY, near the Chinatown area and Brooklyn for the next 28 years.

I have seen a lot of change in this country, both good and bad for Asian Americans who have lived in the USA for sometime as well as the newly arrived immigrants. I have experienced numerous racial slurs and indignations (more so from other minority groups than the general caucasian population), prejudice in the workplace and in school, etc., etc., I am sure all of you have experienced the same at one point in your life. And those that haven't yet, then you are very fortunate and I would truly hope that you never will have such a harsh experience. And through it all I have kept the belief that we as Asian Americans will one day be recognized as a strong political ethnic group that must be dealt with accordingly and respected by the government in order to truly receive the respect as a hardworking and educated group of people. Are we there yet, I don't think so, but we definitely have made some very important strides toward that goal. I see it more so in CA than anywhere else in the country. There is a very large Asian population here in the NY metropolitan area as well, but unfortunately, the Asians in this area are not as strong a group as the Asians in CA. Especially the Chinese Americans, I say that since I am Chinese myself.

Will we as Asians ever be completely integrated into this country? Or do we really want to be integrated at the cost of losing our identity? I think the pressure of growing up in this country has definitely had a negative impact on some of the younger generations, those that are now in their teens and early twenties. I remember an incident from a few years ago, friend of the family had some discipline problems with her daughter and wanted to vent with my in-laws. Apparently, her daughter made the statement that she is not Chinese and that she hates Chinese people. I am not quite sure what had happened in this young girl's life that would drive here to make such a statement. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to speak to this young girl personally or get more information, as expected the parents didn't really want this to be exposed to the public or other Chinese families in fear of shame and ridicule. However, I have never forgot this incident because it made me think of just how difficult it can be growing up as an Asian in this country (I personally hate the term minority!!), even now as much as this country has changed for the better to a certain extent. It is definitely easier for new immigrants arriving today than it was for me over 30 years ago.

I guess I should stop here before I start writing a novel or something.......hope to hear input fro other members and start a real discussion!

Thks!

I would say that asians as a whole have integrated fairly well into American society. I am a Korean male who was adopted when I was three by a caucasian family. The family that adopted me were military so I lived in several places on the east coast, Baltimore, Virginia, and Florida. Unfortunately the places where I lived did not have very many asians at all. The few I went to school with I became friends with easily (usually 1 or 2), but I had to make friends with many different types of people. I experienced alot of racial jokes both as a child, and as an adult, from white, black, and latino. The one thing I realize as I have gotten older, is that most minorities would rather have us around than whites. However, I have noticed that most asians would rather have whites around than other non-asian minorities. Another thing I have noticed is that the stereotypes we deal with are different than the ones blacks and latinos deal with. Whites trust us more, and it would be much easier to get a job as an asian than as a black or latino. Yet, whites are also more openly insulting and critical of asians than of blacks or latinos. A lot of whites have no problem calling us [epithet]s, or chinks to our face, but seem afraid to call a black person or a latino a derogatory name to their face. There are asians in the military, in business, in professional sports, in mainstream entertainment, and there are asian products in every store. When is the last time you were in even a small town and didn't see a Chinese food place? We are not as predominant as blacks are, but that may be a cultural side affect. We are not as boisterous nor aggressive as blacks are with regards to making our presence known in America. If anything, we are more similar to latinos in that regard, and there are just about as many of them in mainstream America as us, and their population is vastly larger than ours. That's it for me, I am not trying to write volume two of "asian guy"'s book.

Well I'm learning about how well Asians have integrated into society by reading the posts and from my own observations in my life. I think it is a bit harder, if not a lot harder for Asian males to integrate into society. That goes for most males of a minority background. I'd like to add something from Malcolm X, in this discussion, and everyone please feel free to respond to how you feel about this:

"Ten men can be sitting at a table eating, you know, dining, and I can come and sit down where they're dining. They're dining; I've got a plate in front of me, but nothing is on it. Because all of us are sitting at the same table, are all of us diners? I'm not a diner until until you let me dine. Then I become a diner. Just being at the table with others who are dining doesn't make me a diner, and this is what you've got to get in your head here in this country. Just because you're in this country doesn't make you an American."--Malcolm X