Recycling habit

What is the incentive for American to separate garbages?

A surprising thing I found in US is recycling habit of American people. Many people are enthusiastic and willing to separate garbages for recycling purpose even though they get nothing for compensation. In contrast to Thailand, people also separate garbages, but they have monetary compensation that is paid by a recycling company for separated garbages. Personally, I am quite sure that many Thai people would stop separating garbages if they can not sell them. From my observation, the factor that made this difference between US and Thailand is higher environmental spirit.

Obviously, American people are more aware of the important of environment than Thai people. I have seen tremendous campaigns related to environment in US. For example, I went to a festival in downtown of Cincinnati, Ohio. Among many stores and restaurants, I saw many group of people who were promoting the benefits of separating garbages, and many people were interested in this campaign. In that event, all trash points had separated trashes for recoiling purpose. From observation, most people did separate garbages correctly. In addition, I also had a great chance to join a church’s activity seeing a movie, Wall-E. After the movie ended, people began discussing about the environmental situation and why it is important to separate garbages. These experience I had represent how high environmental spirit American people have. On the other hand, although there are many separated trashes provided in a festival in Thailand, people still ignore to separate garbages. Just in a festival can represent Thai people treat their garbages, so I don’t need to go further to household habit.

Now I feel worried about the environment in Thailand, especially about garbage issue. Last year there were three garbage dumps got fire and caused pollution to communities. It would be better if Thai people had higher environmental spirit.

The other critical questions.

Why some people love doing graffiti? what is the purpose? How does police react to this problem?

Why some American love eating in their car?

The new Jim Crow

Racial discrimination is an interesting issue that grabbed my attention in the American Culture class. In fact, although this issue seems likely to fade away from American society, there is some unseen forces that keeps the “Jim Crow” system under the society. According to the famous Michelle Alexander’s book, “The New Jim Crow”, the war of drugs is the most influential factor that has undermined the equality and keep people of color in poverty.

The war of drugs has sent a lot of African-American people to jail and kept them in low-class population. Nowadays, people who are convicted as felons are deprived the voting right. In addition, the criminal history is used as a criteria to get a good job. Many black people are suffering from finding a good job and removed from political right. A statistic shows that nearly 90 percent of felons related to drugs is black people. Because of the war of drugs and the racial discrimination in the past, black people have been treated unfairly by police. Some research indicates that police is more tendency to call black people to stop and investigate than to white people. In fact, white people are likely to use drugs as the same rate as black people. Therefore, black people who involved in incarceration are unfairly isolated and lost their future, in term of job and standard of living. This is a true discrimination that is working in a vicious cycle. The one who involved in this cycle is hard to get back to the society.

In sum, it is undeniable that this kind of discrimination has been going on systematically in American society and widening the gab of the society. The future challenge is how American destroy the new Jim Crow and truly clean up racial discrimination.

Why Asians succeed in US

I had a good chance to read the article, "How the Asians became white", on Washingtonpost. The article describes about that nowadays, Asians are treated almost as same as white american people, in term of getting a good job. Additionally, the professor Danielle Ahlberg also presented an interesting statistic in class that the percentage of poor-asian people as low as white people. This makes me continue thinking how the majority of asian people in United States has a good life and is above the poverty line.

In my opinion, most of Asian people who has immigrated into United States are middle-class citizens of their original country. They are educated people and come to United States primarily for a better life. Some people might come to access better education to get a better job in their hometown, but others might come to pursue a good career in US. The reason why I say most Asians who have come to US are high-quality people is that there is some concealed process behind the result.

Obviously, coming to US is costly to most of asian people. Many Asian countries have lower currency value than that of United States. This means that people who aim to come to US need to primarily afford this cost. Additionally, US visa permit is not an easy work to get. In fact, US embassies investigates thoroughly on background of each person who wants to come to United States. They have rejected a lot of people's requests and left only those people who have good profile. This procedure works as an filter that sifts out unreliable people.

From several talks with my Thai friends who are either working or desiring to work in US, they are good educated people and have a good standard of living in Thailand, but they want to have a better life in US. Moreover, my Chinese friends told me that many Chinese people want to get US citizenship and immigrate to US because they think US is better than their own country in many aspects, such as social welfare, environment, and freedom. 

Moreover, "The harder you work, the better life you get" is one of the famous Asian mottos that Asians have brought to US. They work hard with the hope that they will achieve better life.