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Retrospective Final Blog

  The blogging assignments, for me, have been a place where I can collect my thoughts. My blogging process has normally been all my ideas just being typed out and then slightly organizing them into a somewhat formulated manner. These blogs have been a crucial jumping point for my papers since it allows me to start looking at my topic and provisional argument on a more in-depth scale. In addition, having the ability to bounce these ideas off other peers in these blogs and in the workshops and peer reviews has allowed me to get a new perspective on my paper’s topic that I would never have come up with on my own. I have appreciated the feedback and additional ideas that have been developed from my initial proposal to result in a deeper, more complex argument for my essays. This collaborative learning style has made the writing process and the classroom environment much more comfortable and encouraging. My biggest advice to future students is to utilize these blogging assignments and addit
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WP4 Blog 2

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A fter Monday’s presentation that showed us how to utilize the USC Libraries Research Guides and Digital Library for our primary sources, I found the USC Digital Library’s Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive that captured Japanese American incarceration during World War II. These images “document scenes of: 1) the mass removal and incarceration process; 2) life in camps at Manzanar, Santa Anita, Tanforan, and Tule Lake; 3) post-war repatriation to Japan”. Additionally, “[i]t features newly digitized photographs, documents, manuscripts, paintings, drawings, letters, oral histories, and inventories of archival collection”. From my personal experience, my history classes only would project pictures of the incarceration camps but Japanese Americans were never in these photographs. By excluding images of these Japanese American, it neglects to acknowledge the moral injustice of forcing American citizens to leave their homes and live in deserted areas. For this reason, I believe tha
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WP4 Blog 1

While history teachers often gloss over or mention the Japanese internment camps, such as the one at Manzanar or White Heart Mountain, many fail to go much further in depth on the subject or even mention key Japanese American figures who worked to ensure that Japanese Americans received due justice for the American government’s wrongful mistreatment. This topic resonates deeply with me mainly because all of my great grandparents on my Japanese side were affected by President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 that forcefully removed my family from their homes, properties, and lives. As a result of the racial discrimination towards Japanese Americans, my great grandparents and their families all decided to react in various ways. One of my great grandfathers decided to join the 442nd Infantry Regiment of the American army, my other great grandfather and his family were sent to Manzanar, my great grandmother was sent to Japan, and the other great grandmother spent her adolescence in White H
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WP3 Blog 2

In class, I started on USC Libraries (ie. ProQuest and Credo) as a starting point. As I continued my research, I felt that I needed to consolidate my focus on one group, the African American community, rather than have less-detailed information on two, unique and diverse groups. The main keywords in my searches were “COVID 19” and “African Americans”. The information, news articles, etc. instantly popped up, showing that there are some efforts in educating the masses on the racial disparities that are occurring during this pandemic. One of the most helpful websites that I found was an article on the Harvard Gazette “Curating the experience of Black America in the age of pandemic” that brought me to a website that provided links to datas/statistics, narratives, more news sources, workshops and activities, and other educational information. This is where I was able to find a majority of my sources for my research. I’m still deciding whether I’d like to start my essay with the narrative o
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WP3 Blog 1

Initially, I thought of focusing on Asian Americans, particularly Chinese immigrants, due to the recent racial discrimination and Anti-Asian movements as a result of COVID-19. As an Asian American, I remember seeing on the news a growing number of hate crimes towards Asians in America, especially as people were referring to the epidemic as the 'China-virus'. However, focusing on the accessibility to health care, my research showed that the African American and Hispanic communities were more negatively affected and had the highest number of COVID-19 cases. In my beginning steps of the research process, I found that in many communities including Des Moines, Iowa, the African American and Hispanic accounts for the smallest numbers in population yet make up for the highest percentage of contracting/being affected by COVID. In order to properly look into the social determinants impacting these two communities, I will need to look into the statistics, their accessibility to health ca
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WP2 Blog 2: Library Database Research

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          Using the ProQuest library database, the L.A. Times magazine’s “Sands of Time” article appeared multiple times when searching for information on “Bruce’s Beach” and “racial discrimination in Manhattan Beach”. After reading through the editorial, these sentences — “But as the popularity of Bruce’s Beach grew, so did white hostility. Black beachgoers would find their tires slashed; the Ku Klux Klan torched a black-owned home nearby and tried to burn down the resort” ( L.A. Times , 2007) — stuck out to me the most. It actually prompted my essay and further research into the unacknowledged/unknown African American families who were also affected by the KKK and white hostility of the 1920s in South Bay. While Governor Gavin Newson has specifically acknowledged the wrongdoings of Bruce’s Beach and there is a Senate bill to transfer property rights back to the Bruce family, this is not the end. The quote in the L.A. Times article hints at an unfortunate reality that more families
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WP2 BLOG 1: Displacement

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Image Credits: Pete Morris on californiabeaches.com (Top); The Guardian (Bottom) Being born and raised in Manhattan Beach, I immediately planned on doing my Writing Project 2 on my hometown’s Bruce’s Beach, specifically amendments to rectify the displacement via eminent domain that occurred a hundred years ago. Coincidentally, one of our assigned readings covered the story of Bruce’s Beach. On September 30, 2021, California’s Governor Newsom returned the property to the Bruce family along with condemning/apologizing for the racial discrimination as local authorities forced the family, against their will, to sell the first resort for African Americans on the west coast. While returning the land and giving the Bruce family the freedom to use the property however they chose, the local authorities in the 1920s took away the family wealth and inheritance. Being worth $72 million, the family should be compensated for more than the mere $14,500 that they received from the city in 1929. While
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