Denise Pelayo

Daehwan Lee

AAS 201

May 10, 2017

Reflection

Starting off this semester in Asian American Studies, I did not believe

that race had impacted me in anyway, but throughout the semester I started

to learned that race has shaped my life in multiple ways. Race is the main

factor that establishes our lives before we are even born. For example, I am a

Latina that lives in a neighborhood that use to be predominantly white and

then became populated with Hispanics and Latinos. I have realized that this

bit of history has made my neighborhood segregated by race and class. This

has affected my race by making it inferior and putting it through a series of

difficult situations. For example,

In there being so many immigrants in one area has made my neighborhood

overcrowded and a low-income community that has limited resources. The

resources that I have noticed that have been limited are in the areas of jobs,

education, and heath. The jobs that we are offered are usually low-waged

jobs and hardly ever white-collared positions. Our educations is affected

because we have over-crowd classrooms, with teachers that are not properly

educated or motivated to help students out. Another factor of how our

education is being affected is because the majority of people that live in my

community have first generation parents, that have very little education, and
do not have the skills to education their children to pursue a college

education. Our heath is affected because factories and other businesses that

pollute the environment tend to establish in low-income communities

because it is cheaper. This affects minorities by cutting their life spam

shorter. It has come to my attention that being a woman and a minority

means that I am in double-jeopardy, meaning that my life will be twice as

hard unlike if I was a male and white. My life will difficult because sexuality

and gender will play major roles in whether I will be able to get certain jobs

or in anything that I want to do throughout my life. Race is a factor that has

shaped my life since before I was born by determining how long I will live,

the resources that I will be exposed to, jobs that will be offered to me, and

how well off my life will be.