Asian American Studies

Class identity, gender identity and sexual identity are three major social experiences that may challenge the salience of ethnic identity in second generation Asian American behaviors. All of them are having a great influence on choices of their lives. Working class status might compete with ethnicity in marital choices. From the experiences of New York City Koreans, we know that class status and gender affected their marital choices. In the interview, there are sixty interviewees who are American Korean men and women. They are divided by class status. The result shows both second and first generation American Koreans said that they want to marry with someone who has the same ethnicity; working class second generation of American Koreans said that they have no racial preference, which means they do not care what racial group to marry with. Working class first generation American Koreans said that they want to marry with someone who has the same ethnicity. There is no question about why the first generations are more preferring married with the one who has the same ethnicity. No matter they are working class or middle class, those first generations all maintain their traditional culture so they believe married with co-ethnic can maintain their ethnicity. The reasons why the middle class second generations prefer married with co-ethnic is because most of them want to get a close relationship with their parents. Compare to the working class people, they have better education, better lives and better relationship with their parents than the working class Asian Americans. So they might do the thing that their parents want them to do which is married to co-ethnic. Most working class second generation are not having good relationship with their parents. They are more tending to marry outside because most of them are not satisfied with their lives and jobs. If they marry outside, they can have a better life and also their children can avoid discrimination and can have more...