Response to "Turkified" Article

            I thought the essay on racism by Ozlem Gezer was very interesting to read. It made me realize that what this Turkish girl is going through is nothing new in this world. I am sure that individuals of different ethnicities have experienced this racism at one time in their life when their race is a minority in a particular area. Growing up in California, I did go through the whole questioning phase during which I was continuously bombarded with inquiries relating to my ethnicity. I have been asked how Vietnam is like, how the people are, and have heard some stereotypical assumptions towards my culture. However, I think that California is more accepting to different cultures because it is a very diverse state. A city in California usually consists of a wide variety of ethnic groups, thus contributing to people’s willingness to be open-minded and respectful to others. I don’t think I have ever been offended when people ask me about my culture or feel out of place just because people I meet on the street are of different race. In my opinion, the article is very well-written because the author is revealing some truth behind why she can never be a “proper German” while approaching it with a light-hearted and humorous sense.

Blog

            For the past week and a half, we have been listening to the stories of people’s immigration process and their history for the Ancestry Project. I find it very interesting because there were so many different stories and experiences. Also, many people were able to learn new things from their family members by searching through Ancestry.com and analyzing the data. Although the person I researched on was not that interesting, I was able to learn how complicated it is to find data on individuals and try to make sense from various forms of documentations. Looking through the data on the website was very time consuming because there were so many people with the same name and similar information. I had to actually read through all the documents and calculate the dates to see if they matched up. As if that wasn’t hard enough, the handwriting on the censuses were extremely illegible, which made the whole process even worse! What I did enjoy from this project, however, was hearing the unique stories of some of the immigrants and compare their processes with what was described in Roger Daniels’ book.