Sun Mi Hong
West Coast University
Abstract
Cultural pluralism class has changed my view of people I see every day. As a student who is studying nursing at West Coast University, I will have patients from different nationalities. This class made me open up my mind to everyone I will treat later on in an equal and fair manner. Choosing to go to Japanese American Museum opened my mind to see how they have settled in United States and how difficult it was for them to become a citizen of the United States. This paper is about how my perspective changed before and after I visited the Japanese American Museum.
When I started going to West Coast University, I was expecting more health related classes, like my other class, Anatomy which goes over names of body parts and where they are located. However my school gave me a class called Cultural Pluralism. I thought it is waste of my time and money for me to take this class. I was wrong. Taking this class not only opened up my mind about other races but taught me what they went through in order to gain their freedom and rights. When I think of racism I only thought of African American’s. I never thought of how others like me, Korean American, went through racial discrimination and got our rights. When one of the assignments was to go to a cultural museum I was very excited. I was looking through the lists of many cultural museums and saw Korean American Museum. Since I am Korean it was my first choice. I wanted to go and learn more about how they started living in America and survived. However, when I called the museum to found out their opening hours, they were closed for a conventional event. My next choice was the Japanese American Museum. As a Korean, I always knew there was some hatred between the Koreans and Japanese. I understood how Japanese controlled Koreans when they took over Korea’s land for many years and put them into science experiment and tortured them.