Blog Post 7

From this class, I can say that I have thought a lot more about my identity and my heritage.  This is not only because I identify as Japanese-American.  I know that, even if I belonged to a different ethnic group, this class would have still caused me to deeply reflect on my identity.  This class has changed the way that I see myself.  Before this class, I described myself as a Japanese-American.  Whenever I was asked “what are you,” I would respond with Japanese.  However, because of this class I see myself more as an American than I ever have.  I know this seems odd, since I am a fourth generation on my mother’s side, and I don’t even know what generation on my dad’s side.  My ancestry has been in the United States for such a long time, but I still always identified myself as Japanese.  From the material we have learned in this class; however, I feel much more comfortable calling myself American. 

The film that honestly affected me the most was The Color of Fear.  While this was not a film shown in class, I did watch it because of this course.  It so deeply affected me because of the colored men’s’ sense of Americanism, especially the Chinese man.  He made a point out of identifying himself as “American.”  He made it clear that he also identified and was proud of being Chinese, but he was calling himself American to make a point.  His doing this is what really made me reflect on my own identity.  I saw myself as similar to him, since I always called myself Japanese, but I was American too.  One historical event that deeply affected me was the Chinese imprisonment on Angel Island.  I never knew that something like that happened to the Chinese, and I was absolutely shocked.  Learning about this affected me because, before this class, I was unaware of many of the hardship of other Asian ethnic groups.  I only really knew Japanese-American history.  Now that I know what other Asian groups have been through, I feel a lot more connected to them.  The CRT term that affected me most was by far the Model Minority Myth.  I have always put a lot of pressure on myself because I bought into the stereotype that since I was Asian, I had to excel in school.  It is one of the reasons that I pushed myself so hard.  I didn’t even realize that that is what happened until I took this course and learned about the Model Minority Myth. 

Even though there was no real reason, no time in my life or teaching from my parents, that made me feel like I wasn’t American, I still wouldn’t have called myself that because half of me wasn’t white.  Half of me is colored; therefore, in my mind, I wasn’t truly American.  This class has shown me how incredibly wrong I was.  I think before, I bought into the synonym that American is synonymous with white, and while I never applied this to anyone else I knew, I somehow applied it to myself.  The biggest thing I will take away from this course is my new understanding of my identity.  That I am as American as anyone else in this country.