Race and Ethnicity Paper Essay

I was born and raised in China. I would come to self – identify with the Chinese people. My roots allow me to be classified as Asian. Mandarin and Cantonese are languages I have learned to speak and read. These languages also help to identify me as Chinese. What is race? Race defines who we are. We look at people and experiences through race and culture. Both of my parents are introverted in personalities. They are soft spoken because they once lived under the fears of Communism. They taught me not to speak inappropriate things to other people. This prevented much trouble from occurring. I have been taught by the spoken and unspoken ways of my parents and teachers to utilize my race as the social lens through which I can value people and experiences. My parents shaped me early on life to not speak out about Chinese Politics. They taught me that Chinese plays a role in my cultural identification. Through generations of racial modeling, my parents passed on these oppressive limitations. What make me Chinese? What are the characteristic of a Chinese person? I really don’t know. Other identifying me as a Chinese by my skin color, hair, eyes, height, other appearance features, and the language I speak, and where I come from. I’m a quiet person in school, and when I have questions or I need help on my subjects, I hesitate to raise my hand. Since my freshman year I have been like this. I’m represented as a workaholic Chinese. I turn in every assignment and on time, for this reason, they identified me as an Asian, because of the stereotypes placed on Asians my behavior and attitude contributed to people’s reasoning. My ethnic identification exposed me to a cultural clash. For example, we had a critical thinking class last year, for summer camp. We read an article in our class, part of the paragraph described a Chinese person taking a sample food. He liked it because it was free. Therefore, the rest of the class considered Chinese people to be greedy. People always judge us by our conversations, actions and jokes. We do not need such a race consciousness in order to know who we are. It is hard to identify one’s self. It shouldn’t be based on where you were born, where you come from or the color of your skin. I don’t want to be a Chinese nor any other ethnic background. If an American gave birth to her offspring in China, and her baby was raised there they may face the same cultural biases as I have. The baby would probably speak Chinese, use chopsticks, and dress like a Chinese person, but that does not make them Chinese. Racism will never end unless the word race is not used any more. We must stop separating Chinese, American, and Mexican groups.