Week 6 - William Chan; Cultural Identity and Diaspora

Stuart Hall brings up a interesting point in this article, Cultural Identity and Diaspora. Hall brings up an idea of the "otherized" cultural or racial group. This idea of being "otherized" is applicable to Asian-Americans. Asian-Americans have been given this label as the "model minority", which is saying to other people of other ethnicity as a standard of how "non-white" people should behave, act, or conduct themselves in everyday life; and this includes how one should dress, how well one does financially, how one is employed, and all these other social aspects of life of basically "how well one is doing". This "otherized" label is associated with people who aren't "doing so well". Asian-Americans have been placed under the otherized label due to the diasporic groups of Asian-Americans who are in lower income areas, and grow up in urban neighborhoods where its more of a rough environment; filled with crime activity, and drugs and gangs. It has seen that Asian-Americans have been labeled as the model minority, but in fact there are cases where Asian-Americans have been placed in the "otherized" end of the spectrum due to the way they have been raised and this has a lot to do with cultural identity. One who grows up in a area where the language slang, traditions, and mannerisms are different from another area, already shows the cultural difference in the lifestyle they live. I have always recognized this growing up in the Bay Area, how ethnically and economically diverse it is, and it does play a role in how one carries their selves in day-to-day life. This same idea can be applied to outside of America, and it's proof this "otherized" label is being placed upon diasporic groups because one can observe and note the differences the people in power or the dominant people have vs. the people who are working and trying to maintain to survive. The way they are treated and how much more they have to do to live is the proof that there is a difference between culture and the way they are treated due to how they live and who they identify as.

The author, Stuart Hall brought up a interesting point on how one's cultural identity has a lot to do with their past history and what led up to their present makes them who they are, is the future going to entail that we stay in these different cultural identities and would it be better to have a universal understanding of "cultural identity" or to keep them separated?

Stuart Hall. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.”
http://www.mywhcc.com/about/