Coming to USA , concerns..

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was just considering my options of coming to a US university to do a Masters. Apart from the financial and godforsaken number of applications ,exams needed for this I am wondering the safety of living in USA.
I ve heard there is a strong racism among the US ppl regarding specially asians. (Even though am from a completely different background from typical asian. Buddhist ,Sri lankan) . Also that there are lot of muggings , murder in certain city areas!

How safe is the country for a visitor? Is there lot of racism in the cities towards asians? (Following variables needs to be considered : will be in low income category, doing part time jobs while in uni.)

2

What University are you applying to?

To answer your questions, the US is more or less just as safe for foreigners as it is for citizens. Certainly there is still racism in places and some places are just flat out not safe for anyone. As an anecdote I am currently in University and out of probably 20 or so TAs (grad students) I have had I would say all but maybe 5 or so have been foreign. As a matter of fact I had a Chinese teacher for my freshman English course as odd as that may sound.

If you find a University that you want to go to don’t let concerns for your safety stop you.

3

Well, my mom rarely has to shoot her way to the supermarket. Almost never in fact.

The US is a remarkable country, absolutely huge with endless diversity. If you go to good places to good things you will meet good people and have a good time. If you go to bad places, to do bad things, you will meet bad people and you might get hurt.

Heck, your country is having a civil war. The US has got to be safer than that.

4

We have sent a couple of our students, who are Arabs, to the States for graduate work, and they are happy. One, a female, is in New York, and is now loves the city. (Granted, she has had her apartment robbed, but that doesn’t seem to bother her too much.) The other, a male, is in Washington, D.C., and is also enjoying his experience. I figure if Arabs can make it in the States, then Southeast Asians can too. (But no doubt the Asian-Americans on this board can contribute more about the racism they have faced in the US.)

5

The larger cities have problems, but avoiding bad neighborhoods, going in groups when out at night, & having a little common sense avoids almost all trouble.

What are you studying?
Have you picked a school?

If you have the cash, consider Vanderbilt, in Nashville. Excellent school, very safe indeed, & the community is much less expensive than many others, even if the school itsself isn’t. It also has a reputation for creating friendships that develop into excellent contacts in later years.

6

For the record, I’m about 28 years old, lived in the US my entire life and in the Chicago area for four years, white guy, skinny and not at all tough … never been mugged. Never been killed. Trust me, the reputation sounds a lot worse than it is in 99% of US areas.

7

Asians probably get the least amount of discrimination from white people, among the various minority groups in the US; blacks and hispanics have more to worry about, depending on where they are, but racism on the whole is much less than it used to be, and is on the decline, and really isn’t something to worry about.

South Asians like yourself are pretty common around universities around the US, so I doubt you would draw much comment. Even here Brookings, South Dakota, home of the South Dakota State University, there are plenty of South Asian students on campus, and I have never heard of any rascist incidents against any of them. Just please do not come into the Walmart I work overnight in and ask me where the “Creme of the Cake” is.

Crime alway varies widely, among different places in the US. For example, the murder rate varies from 13 per 100,000 in Louisiana, to 1.2 per 100,000 in Maine (Note, South Dakota, where I live, the rate is 1.3 per 100,000 ).

8

Well, maybe this is just applicable to Southern California but there are all different types of Asians everywhere. I have never seen any blatant racism displayed to anyone of Asian ancestory. As a matter of fact, my old college, CalPoly Pomona, was about 50% Asian and had lots of Asian teachers.

9

I emigrated here. Know what? You can’t form an opinion on a place you’ve never been by relying on what you see on the news. Because when you go there, you begin to live the life and be with the people, and you recognize the bias of the news you were presented for all those years. You have to separate the newsmakers from the citizens. They are not the same people. I haven’t been mugged, and I’m not dead yet. For the record, I love it in the United States, and I am staying. You ought to at least come here and find out for yourself.

10

I’m 39 years old, and have lived in the United States for my entire life, a good deal of that time spent in inner city neighborhoods. Random crime I experienced include:

  • An unsuccessful attempt to steal a car stereo.
  • A stolen car radar detector and two meter mobile ham radio.
  • Theft of my unlocked bicycle from in front of a restaurant.
  • Theft of two lawn chairs from the front porch of an apartment I rented.

That’s it. Crime in the US is higher than in other affluent developed nations – not that much higher, but it’s still a problem we openly acknowledge. However, the crime rate has fallen dramatically in the past 15 years. Exclude crimes related to the drug or “gangsta’” subculture in inner city areas, and the crime rate is remarkably low. If your lifestyle doesn’t resembe that of a rap song, you’ll be fine.

My parents live in a suburb of Buffalo that is home to a major university (~25,000 students) and a very large Asian Indian community. The suburb claims to have the lowest crime rate in the US, and for the most part it’s true; crime is practically nonexistent there. The town newspaper police blotter is filled with reports of loud teenagers, barking dogs and the occasional shoplifter, and that’s about it.

Plenty of Americans, Asian and otherwise, are Buddhist. The further south you go, the more Bible thumping you’ll hear, but you won’t be assailed for your religious beliefs. Remember that the country continues to attract immigrants from India, Pakistan, China, Israel, and the Middle East, few of which are Christian. The sorts conflicts between Muslim immigrants and native born residents of European countries are rare in the US.

Likewise, Asian Indians are a large minority, more visible in some areas than others. Americans, for the most part, are used to seeing Asian Indian faces; more often than not at their doctor’s office or at the front counter of a hotel, but increasingly everywhere else. Because Asian Americans are a relatively new arrival to the country’s melting pot, as a whole they tend to be less assimilated, and there’s thousans of stores and cultural associations catering to them. There are fewer Sri Lankans, but you’ll find many at larger state universities. – along with a strong support network. Usually, national rivalries (India vs Pakistan, China vs Taiwan, etc) are erased in American academia.

11

I don’t know where you’ll be going to school, but I live in Boston which has a lot of colleges and universities, and also a large Asian population. There are many, many Asian students, and I’ve noticed little racism towards them. I’m sure there is some, but it doesn’t seem to be the norm around here.

For the record, I’ve lived in Boston for 6 years, and I’ve never been mugged. This includes walking drunk through parks alone at night (yeah, a bad idea, but I was never attacked). Like someone else said, if you stay out of bad areas, and you’ll be fine.

12

I’m a single woman living right by NYC. I’ve been mugged once and attacked by a dog once (both times, I put the offenders down). This area has a good sized Asian population, along with Blacks and Hispanics. Very intergrated.

The USA is one huge country. You want to consider what state you are moving to.

13

We have markedly fewer suicide bombers than Sri Lanka.

14

As a native Southern Californian, I agree. In Orange County, off the 22 freeway, there is a sign (an official, white-on-green California Department of Transportation – CalTrans – sign) proclaiming LITTLE SAIGON, a bustling Vietnamese community. (Great food there, by the way.)

In my small apartment building, when I lived in L.A., there were Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Eastern Europeans, Israelis, Iraqis, other Whites, and a Fijian (who was married to a white woman and was father to her two boys). Everybody got along well.

Yes, there is racism in the U.S. But I saw very little of it growing up and living in SoCal. (Heck, I worked with a woman for two years before I realised she was Asian. Race was a non-issue when I was growing up.) There were riots in the '60s, but that was 40 years ago. There were the riots after the Rodney King beating; but that seemed more to be anger against the police. (The riots did hit the Korean community fairly hard, but I think that was more an accident of proximity.)

I’ve seen people sporting Rebel Battle Flags on their vehicles. Not very many, even in rural Washington where I currently live – fewer in L.A. Several friends on different occasions have pointed them out, and have commented that they always consider those people arseholes. In my experience, and in the areas where I go, racists are held up for ridicule.

In short, for the most part and in the areas I’m familiar with, racism is not the problem it seems to be from listening to the reports of people from other countries who have gotten their information from the Media. That said, there are still parts of the country where racists still live. About ten years ago I ran into one in rural Southern Oregon. But I think the cities are more civilised.

As for crime, I was born in L.A. and later lived there for 16 years and worked there for two years prior to that. I’ve been to the notorious South Central L.A., and I’ve never been shot at. I’ve been to Downtown L.A. at night and have never been accosted. I heard gunshots very nearby in the mid-to-late-‘80s in my neighbourhood, but they ended when the Crips and the Bloods entered their cease-fire. I routinely walked around my neighbourhood in the wee hours, and never had any trouble. In 16 years in the same apartment, my car had been broken into once and other neighbours’ cars have been broken into; but it wasn’t extremely common. There are areas you should avoid because of the gang activity, but for the most part L.A. is not as bad as The News makes it out to be.

So if you go to a large city such as L.A., New York, Seattle, San Francisco, etc., I doubt that you’ll find much racism. The crime rates will be higher than in rural areas, but I think that’s true of any large city anywhere in the world.

15

If anything, the stereotype of Asians in the US is that they are extremely smart and high-achieving. (Asian Americans are the only ethnic group that score higher than “whites” on the SAT, for example) This belief can certainly be irritating in its own way, of course.

American universities usually have an area near to the university center where students live in cheap (usually semi-run-down) housing. This area is generally quite safe even though it is full of poor people. All the poor people are students! Some universities offer housing at a fairly competitive rate.

As a side note, the term “asians” in the US usually refers to people of Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese descent. I’m not sure if we have a generic term for people from the Indian subcontinent, except maybe “Indian” as a generic, rather than national, term. (the terms Native Americans or American Indians refer to the indigenous peoples of this continent).

16

True enough–people will probably assume you’re Indian, but will cheerfully take a polite “Sri Lankan, actually” from you. We know, of course, that Sri Lanka’s in Asia, but frankly the Indian subcontinent is so huge and distinct from China, Japan, etc. that people often won’t lump them all together as ‘Asia’.

Also, to be frank, “Asian” is also used as a substitute for the older racial designations “Mongoloid” or “Oriental” that were used for the common Chinese/Japanese racial types but are now usually considered offensive. Since you’re probably as Caucausian as Britney Spears (only a different shade), most people won’t think of you ‘Asian’. Heck, older folks might still call you ‘Ceylonese’! Don’t worry about it; most Americans consider it rude to bring up racial designations at all, and if you want them to ask questions about Sri Lanka you’ll usually have to start the conversation. Most Americans think Buddhists are cool, and it would be considered impolite to bring up your civil war just in case you or yours had been victimized by it.

As for crime, well, I had my wallet stolen on the subway last winter, but I didn’t even notice until I got to work (a woman with a fringed poncho leaned into me, and I realized later that she was making me put my newspaper close to my face so that she could lean down and unzip my handbag), but that was the first crime committed against me in 25 years of riding subways in Boston and New York (and I rode as a teen girl in the seventies, with graffiti, boomboxes, and much more rampant crime!) Just stay alert and look like you know what you’re doing.

Depending on what city or suburb you go to, you’ll probably find plenty of compatriots, a temple or two, and lots of restaurants and places to hang out. America is BIG, though, something you’ll have to get used to. Three thousand miles just on the continental US! You’ll find plenty of places to fit in. But don’t limit yourself to hanging out with your own–we have an incredible variety of people for you to meet.

17

You don’t say whether you’re looking at a university in a large metropolitan area or a smaller city (many large, public unitversities are located in rather small cities) Either way, I wouldn’t worry. Large cities have a diverse population and small “college towns” tend to be accepting of minority students.

As for crime, almost all of it is property-related, not violent. University areas have a large pedestrian population at all hours and are well-patroled by police.

What racism you do encounter will likely be fueled by economic worries – the perception that “foreigners are stealing our jobs.” Since Sri Lanka is not perceived as a major economic threat, you shouldn’t have much of a problem with that.

18

Racism directed against south Asians is not really something many Americans have. I personally have never seen it at all, and I know, or have known, a lot of Indians and Pakistanis, and a few Sri Lankans (all Tamil). Also, as a Buddhist, I can say with confidence that there’s no religious bigotry against Buddhists. I can pretty much guarantee you won’t have any problems.

There are areas where there’s a lot of crime, but overall the US is a safe country. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know what areas one might be less than safe. I might add that I’ve lived in a couple such areas, in Cincinnati and Houston, and never had a problem. Even relatively high-crime areas are hardly what you’d think from watching movies. I was burglarized once (this was, BTW, in a “good” neighborhood), but that’s it.

19

Even if you encounter racism, it’s going to be in employment discrimination or, most likely, snide remarks. Not violence.

Indeed, it’s quite the reverse. IME, Pakistanis and Indians tend to hang out together, for example, because their cultural background and understanding tends up more similar to each other’s than either’s is to native-born Americans. Same with Taiwanese and Chinese, especially in academia. This is especially true in academia where there are going to be individuals of various races and nationalities, but those individuals will not be part of a large family or community enclave.

–Cliffy

20

This reminds of a story that seems apposite somehow. Nearly twenty years ago, I was in graduate school in English at a relatively prestigious private university in a large southern city. According to departmental legend, a fairly well-known female faculty member of Sri Lankan ancestry, a self-described Marxist-feminist-deconstructionist, was buttonholed by the Grand Old Man of the department, a vulgar old coot who lamented having been too young to be an official member of the Agrarian movement, and who was notorious for making inappropriately bigoted comments in and out of the classroom. He wanted to know what “race” she was. She (no doubt hoping to provoke him at least a little) responded, “I’m Caucasian, just like you”. He persisted – “No, I mean what color are you?”. Finally, she shot back “I’m white, <name deleted> – you put a blond wig on me and I look like a Danish whore!”, which apparently shut him up for a while.