Prejudice Essay, Research Paper

Immigrants entering our country have always experienced discrimination

due to many different prejudices. ^How they would not rent to Negroes

or Puerto Ricans. How Negroes and Puerto Ricans were given the pink

slips first at work^ (Colon 243). Prejudice impacted various aspects

of the lives of immigrants including where they lived, their success,

and their careers.

The lives of immigrants were impacted everyday due to the prejudices

they encountered. For instance, in the story ^Blues Ain^t no

Mockingbird^, a black family was impacted by the harassment of white

men because the black family was assumed to be on welfare, therefore;

they were videotaped against their will (Bambara 119-124). Another

more extreme example that Houston illustrates would be the case of the

Japanese-Americans who were thrown into detention camps during the

war. Their loyalty for the country was questioned and they had to

leave many of their possessions behind because of their nationality and

the hatred of the enemy during the war (111-116). These immigrants

encountered prejudices by the way they looked and their race. In the

selection ^To Be a Slave^, it is said that:

It is estimated that some fifty million people were

taken from the continent during the years of the slave

trade. These fifty million were, of course, the

youngest, the strongest, those most capable of bringing

great profit, first to the slave trader, and later to

the slave owner. (Lester 84)

Lester^s illustration shows that many African people were taken because

they were black indeed. If the people who resided in Africa were

white, or the same as Americans or Europeans, there probably would not

have been much of a problem.

Success was stressed on the lives of immigrants. Immigrants

had to try harder then other people. In the story ^The Fat of

the Land^, Yezierska points out that success was extremely stressed.

Hanneh Breineh, a polish immigrant, stressed the importance of becoming

successful. She did not want her children to have it as bad as she

did. She desperately wanted them to become American. By the end of

the story, all of her children are successful and rich in some way

(33-49). ^^What did I tell you? In America, children are like money

in the bank^^(Yezierska 42). Success is also a key point in the story

^Two Kinds^ by Amy Tan. In this story, a Chinese mother and daughter

immigrate to California after losing what they had in China. The

mother believed ^you can be anything you wanted to be in America.^

Therefore, her mother tries to make the little girl a prodigy. At

first they try by beauty, then by music, they keep on trying until the

little girl gets fed up with proving to her mother that she is not a

genius(199). All in all, success was measured very highly on the lives

of immigrants. They did, however, have it harder.

Prejudice impacted the careers of immigrants. It was hard for

them to find and to carry on jobs at a good job place or for a

decent salary. For example, in the story ^Kipling and I^, a young

Puerto Rican man tried to find work everyday for a while. He would go

door to door to factories around the New York area. But, when he went,

they kept on saying ^Sorry, nothing today.^ He then says, ^It seemed

to me that ^^today^ was a continuation and combination of all the

yesterdays, todays and tomorrows^ (Colon 243). Most of the time in

history, immigrants worked in hot factories laboring very harshly, but

only for a nickel and hour. Immigrants had not only to learn a skill,

but to speak the language also. Which, all in all, makes prejudices

stand out dramatically in the workforce.

Prejudice did impact the lives of immigrants. It did impact

their success and their careers. But it also affected them

where they lived. Most immigrants lived in large crowded cities, which

Yezierska explains in ^The Fat of the Land^. ^In an air-shaft so

narrow that you could touch the next wall with your bare hands, Hanneh

Breineh leaned out and knocked on her neighbor^s window^(33).

Prejudice impacted the various aspects of the lives of

immigrants including where they lived, their success, and their

career. prejudice is not a good thing and it can either lead to the

upcoming of some people or the short coming of most. Prejudices will

always be here, immigrants will somehow overcome. ^From this time I

was never again what might be called fairly whipped, though I remained

a slave four years afterwards. I had several fights, but was never

whipped^(Douglass 92).

by: kelly.s

716

Page

Applebee, Arthur N.,and Judith A. Langer, eds. Multicultural Perspectives.

Evanston, Illinois: McDougal, Littell & Company,1993.

Bambara, Toni Cade. ^?Blues Ain^?t no Mockingbird.^? Applebee and Langer

119-124.

Colon, Jesus. ^?Kipling and I^?. Rico and Mano 242-244.

Douglass, Frederick. ^?Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American

Slave.^? Applebee and Langer 22-27.

Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki, and James D. Houston. ^?Farewell to Manzanar.^?

Applebee and Langer 111-116.

Lester, Julius. ^?To Be a Slave.^? Applebee and Langer 80-84.

Rico, Barbara Roche, and Sandra Mano, eds. American Mosaic: Multicultural

Readings in Context. 2nd ed. Boston: Houhgton Mifflin Company, 1995.

Tan, Amy. ^?Two Kinds.^? Applebee and Langer 198-205.

Yezierska, Anzia. ^?The Fat of the Land.^? Rico and Mano 33-39.