In this week's reading, we discussed the effects of minority on the performance of education.

One of the interesting points that came up was this pressure to do well in school, was actually
harmful to the situation of some of the Asian students, as discussed in the Ogbu article. I agree
with this statement because I am close to a relative who suffers from this intense pressure. And
as much as we try to encourage a stress free environment, I feel that society will always drive
the pressure to succeed. After I shared that, a friend contrastingly shared that she had a friend
who would not have succeeded without the pressure or the drive to succeed.
Another point that we descriptively touched upon was the issue of communities that stick
together, but we mostly agree that while it happened, we did disagree on the extent to which it
happened and the nature of it. I wanted to believe that it was a negative habit that people
partook in and it should be something that we should change to increase the diversity, culture
and identity of mixed communities. I focused on the example brought up in the Lee article, in
which Korean grouping seemed to lead to elitism and would progress to racism. There was 2
others in the group that deemed the habit as a natural harmless occurrence, and the choice
was a choice that people should be able to make. Their example was at their school, where
even though groups split into ethnically similar groups, they had no racial problems when they
were forced together.
One friend that I interviewed viewed minority in terms of numbers, which made a lot of sense
to me after I thought about it. To look at the numbers of people in the area, and there different
characteristics with respect to ethnicity, belief, and status was what she included in her
description. And I was glad that minority did not just simply include race. However, when I
introduced the concept of immigrant, her tone, as an immigrant herself changed towards a
more positive attitude. She described this word to be associated with difficulties and
perseverance, and made an important note that anything an immigrant did seemed more grand
and inspirational than if a non-immigrant did it.
My uncle whom I interviewed felt that in his position at Los Angeles, there were so many
diverse groups that everyone was the majority. And I was almost convinced while I was talking
to him, and I agreed with him because of the variety that you could find in Los Angeles. He
reiterated, "If I wanted to find Mexican or Hispanic food with a Mexican community there, I
would not have to drive more than 15 minutes to do so, and similarly he could similarly do this
with any ethnicity in L.A." In not taking a necessarily positive or negative view on the word
minority, we decided that it was in the perspective of the viewer to see minorities in the scope
of the community, the city or the country. When asked about immigration, he talked about
himself as an immigrant from Cambodia.
The third interview I did with another conjured images of history when she brought up the
Chinese Exclusion Act and the Quota Laws that stagnated the amount of Asians that could enter
America. After conversing, it led to how magnificent it was that Asians were seemingly
integrated to certain parts of society, despite the history that we had.
Overall, between the three interviews I was not surprised to find rather positive or neutral
responses from the interviewers that I interviewed. It almost made me believe that negative
views towards minority and immigration were nonexistent, but I realized that I would probably
need a larger sample. It's probably that negative views towards minority and immigration were
rare, but were the most important to change. To study