AMERICAN ASIANS

AMERICAN ASIANS

Name

Institution

Date

During the 19th century there was a massive competition among the western countries on the colonial states and one of the affected parts of the world was Africa and Asia (Spickard, 2009) . It is during this time that the industrial revolution was at its peak and the ideas of mercantilism were rife. This necessitated need for labor to work in agricultural plantations in the United States and other western countries. The US was involved in many economic expansion activities that also included structural development which required heavy labor supply. Asians were forcefully or induced to migrate to the US and some ended in Hawaii (Spickard, 2009). In the US they were engaged in building railway and other infrastructures while in Hawaii they were engaged in working in large sugarcane plantation. It is important to point out that the type of treatment they received in these two places were different. The working conditions were almost the same but in the US the Asians faced more isolation and racial segregation than in Hawaii. The factor in this case was due to clustering of Asians in Hawaii where most of them lived under the same residence and gained a grip of their social and cultural identity.

In the US the working conditions were harsh as the whites only treated the Asians as workers worth nothing more. The Africa-Americans were not exceptional under this oppressive culture of the whites and this made them to be grouped socially as the Asians (Spickard, 2009). Hawaii was by that time dominated by the Asians and this gave them the sense of belonging that make them appreciate cultural integration and this consoled them as they restored their cultural identity gradually. The other difference is that in US they could own some businesses in their poorly housed residential locations and enjoy some entertainment like in the case of Filipino settlement in San Diego. On the other hand, Hawaii had limited time in engaging in other activities since they labored in the plantations day long.

Reference

Spickard, P. R. (2009). Japanese Americans: The formation and transformations of an ethnic group. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press.