Chinatown is an iconic part of the American imagination, as a tourist destination or as a setting for movies, television and video games. But real Chinatowns are first and foremost a home and community center for Chinese Americans. The high rates of poverty in Chinatown and the discrimination faced by Chinese Americans are often overshadowed by the image of Chinatown in popular culture. In a racially segregated America, Chinese immigrants were limited in where they could live and work and often faced violence and discrimination in white neighborhoods and surveillance and policing in their own. Chinatown was a place where Chinese Americans could access traditional foods and medicines, engage in cultural and religious celebrations, and create a sense of home and belonging in a country that deemed them "perpetual foreigners."