	This experience of racism is much different than that of past Asian immigrants, and coincides with a different experience of acculturation due to both the economic and racial climate. While Clutter’s family moved to an integrated area with a significant Asian population but also a significant non-Asian population, in the late 19th and early 20th century Chinese immigrants often moved to Chinatowns. Chinatowns were self-sustaining communities almost entirely occupied by Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans. They operated their own businesses, maintained their own charities, and led an entire social, economic, and political life within Chinatown. This insulated Chinese immigrants and Americans from economic shocks such as the Depression but also mitigated the need for acculturation. Within Chinatown, people could speak Chinese, not learn English, and maintain cultural traditions from China without interference from non-Chinese Americans. These allowed Chinese immigrants to sustain their culture in America, but not only did it make it more difficult for them to interact outside of Chinatown, it made it more difficult to maintain Chinese culture after they did venture outside of Chinatown. Chinatown drew an either/or dichotomy between Chinese and American cultures. Although Chinese Americans did eventually come out of Chinatown to influence and be influenced by American culture, this was a long and difficult process. In contrast, since Clutter lived in an integrated area, the process of acculturation began immediately, and he still had the comfort of a large Asian community to bolster his traditional culture. The different situations can be explained by economics, since residents of Chinatown often could not afford to live anywhere else while Clutter’s affluent family had many options, and also racial dynamics, since Chinese Americans in the past were sometimes restricted from living in white areas, while today such restrictions are illegal.
	Mike Clutter’s experience of acculturation was, by his telling, much more pleasant than the historical narratives of acculturation told by immigration historians. To sum up these late 19th to mid 20th century narratives: White ethnics adopted racism in order to be accepted as white. Chinese immigrants took a very long time to produce a second generation, and until then stayed secluded in Chinatowns. Things were going (relatively) great for Japanese immigrants until everyone on the west coast got locked up in internment camps, and they started to question how American they really were. Filipino immigrants adopted white Christian values and were then murdered by white Christians. Mexican immigrants were kicked out during the Depression, got a special category of “illegal” all for themselves, and then all of them were treated as badly as the illegal ones, even the middle-class Americanized immigrants with papers. In contrast, Mike Clutter, as previously mentioned, claims that racism has not affected his life. 
This is not to imply that negotiating cultural boundaries is easy or simple, but it is apparently much easier than doing so in the face of huge racist obstacles. 
 He appears comfortable with both his adopted American culture and his traditional Taiwanese culture, although like anyone, he has had to make some choices. For Clutter, acculturation is primarily an internal struggle with few external obstacles, while immigrants of the late 19th to mid 20th century faced both serious internal and external struggles.
